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South Elgin downs Sycamore to reach title game

South Elgin's offense was initially like a drizzle.

It's a good thing the Storm's boys basketball team was able to focus on defense because that's what fueled the 58-41 victory over Sycamore, the host of the 55th edition of the Leland G. Strombom Holiday Tournament.

South Elgin won all three pool play games in order to advance to Saturday's 7:30 p.m. championship against Burlington Central, which swept its pool thanks to a 65-41 win over Rochelle.

With Peyton Wiegmann, one of Sycamore's trio of 6-foot-3 players and the lone double-figure scorer from the first two games sidelined, the Spartans (0-3) employed a very deliberate style of ball, trying patiently to work for optimal shots.

Combine that with South Elgin missing nine shots and committing a series of unforced errors and the tourney hosts led 7-4. Thankfully for the Storm (3-0), Drake Montgomery stepped up by scoring 9 of his game-high 22 points in the opening quarter. Actually Montgomery was the South Elgin offense until David Binion followed a steal with a dunk to produce an 11-7 first-quarter lead.

"Since it was such a slow start, my aim was to just get us going," Montgomery noted. "I was looking for openings and taking shots when I had them. As a team, we just needed to cancel out the bad shots by focusing on the next one."

The last seven points were the start of a 13-0 surge for a 10-point lead. Sycamore answered with a 9-0 spurt to pull to within one (17-16), before Vincent Miszkiewicz got his first bucket for a 19-16 halftime tally.

"We came out really slow and didn't shoot particularly well," Storm coach Brett Johnson said. "Sycamore played really good defense and with our shots not falling, it made for an exciting first half. Thankfully we had six or seven guys play some lock down defense. We'd run 30 or 40 seconds off the clock and Sycamore got impatient at times and we did a great job rebounding. We kept shooting and finally found a rhythm and the shots fell."

The Spartans continued to hang in with Payton Picolotti's old-fashioned three-point play - part of his team-high 11 points - pulling the hosts to within 25-23. Jace Warrick's right corner trey was followed by three additional bombs - one by Trace Ashby and two more from Montgomery - to give South Elgin a 14-point lead. Sycamore had a lone free throw in what amounted to a 15-1 Storm surge. That included the first field goal after the third quarter ended with South Elgin up 41-24.

"Adding a three is kind of my specialty," said Warrick, who also hit 2 free throws for his 5 points that boosted the Storm's third quarter. "Coach wanted us to focus on defense during the run and we did that, plus Drake kept finding open shooters."

"That was probably our best defensive effort of these first three games," Miszkiewicz added. "Coach wanted us to hold them under 40 and we just missed."

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