Chicago Christian downs St. Edward
St. Edward boys basketball coach PJ White might've been pleased with his team's response to an early hole it dug itself in a 66-52 loss to Chicago Christian at Fr. Edward J. Seisser Gymnasium in Elgin Friday night.
But there were a number of lessons learned in Metro Suburban action that the Green Wave will make note of to beat better teams down the stretch this season.
The Wave (8-9, 3-2), who had gained momentum after winning of 4 of its last 5 games, saw why it's never good to be in a 20-7 hole after one quarter, how hard it is to catch a break while trying to climb uphill or the fact you can't turn the ball over just as you're about to get over the hump.
"A little thing like this, a little thing like that, a loose ball that turns into our foul ..." White said. "You can't beat a good team and have those things happen. And they're a really good team."
Chicago Christian (10-6), now 7-0 in conference, benefitted from a good start, but simply had an answer for every St. Edward run. After Kelvin Cortez-Harvey was fouled on a one-handed rebound he put it back like a tip in a game of 21 to cut the Knights' lead to 4 with 3:10 left in the third, the Knights pushed the lead back up to 10.
When Cortez-Harvey, who led the Wave with 29 points after his scoreless first quarter, drained a left wing 3 with 7:15 left in the fourth to cut the lead to 5, the Knights answered with an 8-0 run, capped by their co-leading scorer, Malik Parker, whose two-handed flush made it 55-42 with 5 minutes left.
"I thought down the stretch we played with a good deal of poise and again didn't get away from our game plan," Knights coach Kevin Pittman Sr. said. "What we wanted to do what was go inside on them. This is a tough place to play, a tough place to win and I give our guys a ton of credit for coming out here and gutting out a win."
Chicago Christian executed that game plan from the start with 15 layups, 7 coming in the first quarter alone, that equated to 38 total points in the paint. Forward Jack Ellison also gave the Knights 22 points to go with 9 rebounds, combining with Parker for 44 of the team's 66 points. The Wave clearly couldn't stop those two and coupled with a sequence in the fourth during that 8-0 run, when Parker drained 2 free throws, the Wave stepped out of bounds on a subsequent inbound that led to another Parker layup, that was just the kind of night the Wave were having.
"It was just little mistakes that we made," said Cortez-Harvey, who had 6 rebounds, 2 steals and four 3-pointers. "We weren't getting loose balls and then the defensive errors. We have to correct the little mistakes like the baseline and loose balls - that really killed us."
Also hurting St. Edward was its 38.6 percent clip from the field versus the Knights' 51.1 percent. Steven Poremba added 10 points but Cortez-Harvey was on an island of his own as the Wave lacked other scorers.
"We missed a lot of shots and we had some good looks and a lot of open shots but a lot of that has to do with good defense by them," White said. "I was happy with our performance just never, never, never accept a loss. "