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St. Edward handles Fenton

St. Edward's speedy guards set the tempo and 6-foot-4 center Nick Duffy provided the steady drumbeat in a 72-59 boys basketball win over Fenton in Elgin Saturday night.

The Green Wave and Bison were tied at 20 in the second quarter of the Metro Suburban West contest when St. Edward (14-3, 4-1) made its move. Senior guard Jake French sandwiched a tip-in and a turnaround jumper around a 3-pointer from junior Andrew O'Neill for a 7-0 run to gain separation.

St. Edward sophomore guard Kelvin Cortez-Harvey later converted a stolen inbounds pass into a three-point play to establish a 10-point lead. It was one of Fenton's 9 turnovers in the first half.

"They ran that 1-2-2 type press at us," Fenton coach Josh Payton said. "We were getting the ball into the strong side and they were stealing the reversal pass. A couple of consecutive turnovers there and a lack of ability to convert and it really swung the tide in their favor."

Sophomore guard Bryan Larsen scored 10 of his team-high 18 points in the first half for Fenton (4-11, 0-4), but Green Wave point guard Gino Domel made sure his team maintained a 10-point lead at the break by penetrating and dishing to 6-3 senior forward Danny Favela along the baseline for a layup just before the halftime buzzer.

Duffy then dominated the third quarter. He scored 12 of his game-high 23 points on 6-of-7 shooting and grabbed 3 of his 8 rebounds in the period to help St. Edward extend its lead to 61-44 through three quarters.

"We felt that we had mismatches, me and Danny," said Duffy, who had a 4-inch height advantage on his defender. "If we could get one of us the ball, we'd score inside as much as possible and that would open up the rest of the game. I started the second half making a few shots in a row so I started making a few after that."

Led by Duffy's 10-of-16 shooting performance, the Green Wave shot 29 of 52 from the field (56 percent), 5 of 15 from 3-point range. They needed to shoot well since the Bison canned half of their 46 shots.

"I thought Nick was the better player than their inside guy, just footspeed-wise, and he had some height on him," St. Edward coach P.J. White said. "So we tried to go inside and we were having success. But Kelvin was shooting it well from the outside, too, early. We wanted to try to run and they wanted to try to slow it down. Anytime we were able to run, we were able to get good baskets."

It was a balanced scoring effort for St. Edward. French finished with 14 points and 2 steals, Cortez-Harvey had 12 points, 4 rebounds and 3 steals and Domel scored 9 points to go with his 5 assists and 2 steals.

Fenton senior Jeremy Biagi sank a pair of 3-pointers in a 9-point performance and senior David Echeverria posted 7 points and 6 rebounds.

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