York runs past Elgin
The Elgin boys basketball team came out quickly against York Saturday.
They turned the Dukes’ opening possession into a turnover. Arie Williams picked up the steal, and Malik Parham-Dunner found Ryan Sitter for a fast-break layup.
The Maroons wouldn’t get their next field goal until the first minute of the second quarter.
After Elgin held tough for a quarter and a half, the eventual result was York rolling to a 68-31 victory at Glenbard East’s When Sides Collide Shootout.
“A lot of unforced turnovers, just silly things. We just didn’t come ready to play,” Elgin coach Mike Sitter said. “We’re not very big, we’re only going to get one shot off every time down the floor so we have to make sure we get a shot off, and half of the time we didn’t. And the shots we did get, we didn’t hit a lot.”
Elgin (9-9) committed 24 turnovers, 13 during a first half in which the Dukes (15-4) finished with a 14-1 run for a 29-17 lead. York led by at least 14 points throughout the second half before collecting the final 20 points of the contest.
The Dukes rode the momentum of Friday’s 61-52 victory at Oak Park-River Forest that put them into a tie for first in the West Suburban Silver.
“To be honest, we haven’t played real well on Saturdays this year. When we’ve had letdowns, it’s been on the Saturday following a Friday (game),” York coach Vince Doran said.
The game pitted two of the area’s premier scorers, Colorado State-bound York senior David Cohn and Elgin’s uncommitted Williams.
Cohn finished with 16 points, including a 3-pointer and 3 baskets off his own steals, but Charlie Rose (two 3-pointers) and Justin Kurash also had 10 points apiece.
Williams had 10 points — all in the second quarter — as he was hounded by the Dukes’ 1-3-1 zone and man-to-man defenses. Reserve Desmond Sanders had 11 points, 9 in the second half, for the Maroons.
“We just trapped (Williams) a lot, shaded toward him and made other people try to score,” said Rose, one of the 1-3-1 wings.
“I thought we started out a little sluggish, but to keep Williams at 10 points and hold him scoreless in the second half, that’s a very good effort by our team defensively,” Doran said. “When I scouted him, he had 32 and I don’t think he hit the rim. We really wanted to make other people shoot it.”
Williams was 3-for-13 shooting, 2-for-8 from 3-point range. The rest of the Maroons were 8-for-29 with two 3-pointers.
“(York is) a well-rounded team. They did a good job of eliminating our top scorer, but their secondary guys stepped up a lot better than ours did,” Mike Sitter said. “We’ve faced that (style of) defense. We get open shots and other guys need to step up and hit those shots and they didn’t do it tonight.”