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Bartlett heats up, tops Elgin

Bartlett avenged a 61-56 early-January loss to Elgin Friday night, and they did it the old fashioned way: with a lot of defense and hot shooting.

After trailing the Maroons 29-24 at halftime and 37-32 with 3:37 remaining in the third quarter, Bartlett closed the period with a 15-2 run to take an eight-point lead into the final quarter. And then the Hawks hit the afterburners, outscoring Elgin 27-15 in the final quarter to win going away, 74-54.

Bartlett was 32 of 58 from the floor, including a torrid 12 of 15 in the final quarter, when they made good on their first 10 shots. Six-foot-three senior guard Austin Gates scored 18 of his team-high 22 points in the second half and also hauled down 10 rebounds, classmate Garrett Jurina, a 6-2 forward, had 19 points and 8 boards, and sophomore Hayden Angell added 13 off the bench.

The Maroons' sophomore Jeffrey Lomax, who left the game with an ankle injury just 90 seconds into the contest, returned to score a game-high 23 points. Junior Xavier Bonds had 14 points and senior Trey Yarber chipped in a dozen.

The win improves the Hawks to 7-19 overall and 4-10 in the Upstate Eight Conference. Elgin slides to 5-21, 2-13 in the league.

There's an old adage that says that one man's junk is another man's treasure. Elgin coach David Hess may take exception to that. The junk he saw from Bartlett Friday night was no treasure for the Maroons - it spelled their doom.

"Give them a lot of credit," Hess said. "They threw a bunch of junk defenses at us - triangle-and-two, a 1-3 chaser - and that really messed us up. We had three assists and 12 turnovers in the second half. We got behind and started pressing and gambling and it all fell apart."

Things started out well enough for Elgin. After the Hawks fashioned an 11-8 lead late in first quarter, Bonds bookended a drive down the lane capped a nifty scoop layup and a pair of free throws around a 3-pointer by Yarber, and the Maroons ended the first with a 15-11 lead.

Elgin picked up in the second right where they ended the first, fashioning a mini 9-3 run that culminated with a Lomax layup to put the Maroons a 10-point lead, their largest of the night, at 24-14.

Bartlett crawled back into it in the final four minutes, eventually halving the deficit by the intermission.

"They beat us pretty good in the first half with some good pressure defense, and that put us in a bad position," explained Bartlett coach Jim Wolfsmith. "Then in the third, the difference was that we aggressively attacked their press, and that really got things going.

"And yeah, we play a ton of gimmicky defenses. I don't have the speed that [Hess] has, so we have to do things like that. On top of that, I thought Garrett, Austin, and (Mohamed) Abdelhafez all had really nice games."

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