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Smith shoots South Elgin past Elgin

Matt Smith has had a lot of memorable moments in his stellar 4-year varsity career at South Elgin, but nothing quite compares to what he did in the first half against Elgin on Monday.

The senior guard decimated the Maroons defense by scoring 26 points in the first 2 quarters, including six 3-pointers, to help the host Storm build an insurmountable 29-point lead. South Elgin went on to cruise to a 71-53 victory in the opening round of the Class 4A regional playoffs to advance to play top-seeded DeKalb on Tuesday.

The 9th-seeded Storm looked nothing like the team that struggled down the stretch of the regular season losing 10 of their last 12 games, including a 12-point loss the 8th-seeded Maroons just over a month ago.

Midway through the first quarter South Elgin (13-16) went on a 17-0 run to open a 26-8 lead. Smith had three 3-pointers during the run.

"We took the loss to them last time kind of personally," Smith said. "Nobody wants to come out and lose to their arch rival. So we came in with the mindset that we wanted this one bad. We came ready to play. We haven't played well lately, but we knew all along we have a good team. It was just a matter of putting it together."

Smith connected on his first five 3-point attempts and added another one just before halftime to give the Storm a 47-18 lead. Smith shot 10-of-15 from the field in the first half.

"I've been in a little bit of a shooting slump lately," Smith said. "So I've been spending a lot of extra time in the gym shooting. It finally paid off today. My teammates did a great job of finding me and I was just blessed to make some shots."

Smith didn't score in the second half, but the Storm didn't need it. Elgin (17-13) never got closer than 18 points. Justin Howard added 12 points for the Storm.

"The big difference this time was we played as team," South Elgin coach Jim Cook said. "Good things happen when you play as a team. We did a good job of sharing the ball and making that extra pass to find the open shooter. Then on defense we did a better a lot better job of keeping them in front of us and not allowing them to drive.'

The first half was nothing short of a disaster for the Maroons, who shot just 7-of-22 from the field and turned the ball over 10 times. The Maroons also played most of the second quarter without their starting point guard Desmond Douglas after he picked up a third foul.

"They came ready to play and we didn't," Elgin coach Mike Sitter. "The effort just wasn't there. They outhustled us down the floor and to every lose ball. Let's face it we played our best basketball in January and have struggled since to get back to that level."

A bright spot for the Maroons was Courtese Cooper had 7 blocked shots to give him 154 for his career surpassing Marcus Smallwood as the school's all-time leader in that category.

Drew Wolf had a team-high 15 points for the Maroons.

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