South Elgin's size does in Huntley
The South Elgin boys basketball team recognized a personnel mismatch against Huntley and exploited it mercilessly in a 77-58 victory at the Hinkle Holiday Classic at Jacobs Saturday.
With Huntley missing its two biggest players for separate family reasons — 6-foot-4 senior Makomborero Tizora and 6-4 junior Olalere Oladipo — the Storm continually fed the ball to 6-foot-9 senior Tyler Hankins, a left-handed pitcher committed to play baseball at Central Michigan.
After South Elgin guards Matty Smith and Justin Howard stroked 3-pointers to open the game, Hankins scored 10 of South Elgin's next 20 points to help the Storm take a 26-10 lead after one quarter.
“My teammates did a really good job of getting it low and I just kept hitting the shots,” said Hankins, who made 8 of 9 attempts for a team-high 16 points and hauled down 8 rebounds.
“We knew that they couldn't stop him, so we kept throwing it to him,” South Elgin coach Jim Cook said.
Huntley (4-4) limited South Elgin (5-4) to 13 points in the second quarter, but the Storm led 39-22 at the break and kept the pressure on with a 9-4 run to open the third quarter, keyed by 2 more buckets from Hankins.
Huntley's JJ Flores scored 16 of his game-high 22 points in the second half, but the Red Raiders never drew closer than 16 points the rest of the way.
South Elgin made the idea of a comeback far fetched by shooting 31 of 48 from the field (65 percent).
“They shot the ball well,” Huntley coach Will Benson said. “You always want to make a team get off to a slower start offensively so they don't build up their confidence, but I think they built up their confidence in a hurry and we could never really tear it down after that.”
Howard, Smith and Logan Atkins each finished with 11 points. Senior guard Quinton McClundon added 8 point and his 5 rebounds helped the Storm win the rebounding battle 26-14.
South Elgin resumes tournament play at Jacobs against Prairie Ridge on Monday at 9 a.m. Huntley likewise returns to the floor Monday against Rockford Boylan at 1:30 p.m.