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Elgin nips West Chicago, wins tournament

If a season is marked by stepping stones, Saturday may well look like a mountain in hindsight for the Elgin boys basketball team.

The Maroons used an 8-1 run to end the second quarter and hung tough defensively in the closing seconds to defeat host West Chicago 51-50 and win the Wildcat Turkey Classic.

Elgin senior point guard Desmond Douglas led all scorers with 20 points and made the all-tournament team, while junior guard Reggie Cole added 13 points and 7 rebounds. More importantly, the pair helped hold star West Chicago guard and tournament Most Valuable Player Tai Bibbs to just 11 points on 5-for-12 shooting.

Junior Courtese Cooper, who also made the all-tournament team, led the Maroons with 11 rebounds and dropped in a transition layup that gave his team a 51-48 lead with 18 seconds left.

The best the Wildcats could counter with was a pair of free throws with 1.2 seconds left by junior Devonte Pascal. After Elgin threw the ball away on its ensuing inbound, Wildcat senior Mikey Bibbs tried a towering inbound pass over Cooper with .2 seconds left that landed in a scrum under the Elgin basket as the final buzzer sounded.

While Elgin coach Mike Sitter was pleased with the tournament win, he put it into perspective.

"If this is the highlight of our season, then it's a disappointing season," he said. "We need to take the momentum into Larkin next Friday, and the Christmas tournament and into conference play, and just get better from there."

Hometown favorite West Chicago couldn't overcome 5-for-13 shooting from the field in the fourth quarter, including 1-for-7 from beyond the 3-point arc. West Chicago shot 32 percent for the game from the field (16-for-50). Wildcats coach Bill Recchia had some perspective of his own for his charges postgame.

"I told them, don't dwell on something like this … know your battle," he said. "It's a battle. You're going to face battles like this throughout the season."

The Wildcats had plenty of opportunities in the second half. They erased a 29-22 Elgin lead with a 9-0 run midway through the third quarter, and a 3-pointer from senior Quinn Ricci with 5:05 left in the game cut the Maroons' advantage to 40-38.

But Tai Bibbs picked up his fourth foul with 1:38 to go, and wouldn't score again.

Moments later, Elgin could savor - at least for the bus ride home, according to Sitter - its first tournament victory in years.

"It's a feeling I haven't felt before," Douglas said. "It's an amazing feeling, that's all I can say."

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