Geneva still perfect after beating East Aurora

A winner of 98 games the past four seasons, Geneva's basketball team has experienced its share of recent success.

This year seems no different.

The Vikings improved their record to 8-0 for the first time since 2000 with Saturday night's 54-41 Upstate Eight Conference crossover victory over East Aurora (0-8) in Geneva.

"It goes back to (former Vikings coach) Tim Pease's first 20-win season," said Geneva coach Phil Ralston. "We've certainly had some pretty good seasons (4th in the state in 2014-15) so you know we're in the middle of a nice little stretch run here."

Ralston insists his team isn't spending much time celebrating its fast start.

"I'm not as focused on that as I am just playing the next game," said the coach. "We had a tough win last night (59-56 over Larkin). I was concerned coming into this game. We know that East Aurora has played a much tougher schedule than that 0-7 record reflects.

"We were concerned about having a mental letdown."

While the Tomcats stayed within striking range early, trailing 15-10 after 1 quarter, the Vikings quieted the concerns of their coach during a 15-0 run that extended their lead to 33-14 late in the first half.

Three-point plays from seniors Cole Navigato and Matt Johnston, and a 3-point basket by freshman Nate Santos fueled the Vikings' 15-point surge.

"There were parts of tonight where I thought we did a nice job executing," said Ralston. "We missed a lot of easy shots. That's the scary part. It was good to kind of grind this one out and get the win."

Switching from a man-to-man defense to a 2-3 zone midway through the first quarter and later to a box-and-one helped create some breathing room for the Vikings.

"We were very concerned early in the game keeping (East Aurora sophomore guard Traevon) Brown in front of us," said Ralston. "He was just getting into the lane too easily so we decided to cut off those angles. It was pretty effective."

The Tomcats were held to 11 points in the middle two quarters, including 2 of 16 shooting from the field in the third period.

"When they went to the zone, we kind of shot ourselves out of it," said Tomcats coach Wendell Jeffries. "We have to be able to make open shots. When a team goes box-and-one on a player, the other players have to step up.

"They hit open shots and we missed them."

East Aurora went more than 10 minutes without scoring a point as the Vikings built a commanding 47-21 lead with 6:07 remaining.

Johnston and Cole Navigato finished with 13 and 11 points, respectively, for the Vikings while sophomore guard Jack McDonald added 9 points.

"We still have a lot of stuff to work on," said Johnston. "A couple of our players are in slumps but it's good because every single person on the court can pick up each other if someone's off."

Davonta Faulkner led East Aurora with 14 points.