Cole, Streamwood down West Chicago despite Gimre's 35

The lights stayed on in Streamwood's gym Tuesday no matter how hard West Chicago guard Jason Gimre tried to shoot them out.

That's because Streamwood 6-foot-7 forward Keenon Cole supplied the host Sabres with enough juice to pull off a 56-53 comeback victory in an Upstate Eight crossover.

Gimre had Streamwood (3-5) on its heels from the start. The 5-foot-10 senior guard scored a career-high 35 points by sinking 11 of his first 12 shots over the span of three quarters, including 9 of his first 10 attempts from 3-point range. Overall, he finished 12 of 17 from the field, 9 of 13 from beyond the arc.

"I was waiting for Jason to have a game like that, to be honest, because we see him shoot like that in practice all the time," West Chicago coach Bill Recchia said. "It was just a matter of time before he had one of these games."

Gimre's 23 first-half points helped West Chicago (3-3) take a 21-9 lead after a quarter, but the Wildcats peaked early. Streamwood got back in the game by working its offense for better shots. They closed the second quarter on a 12-2 run, capped by a Nikola Sinik 3-pointer that trimmed the deficit to 29-23.

The momentum continued into the third quarter as Cole scored 7 of his team-high 26 points, but West Chicago maintained a 50-46 lead until midway through the final period. That's when the Sabres used a 10-0 run to take control. Freshman Zack Marquez scored inside and junior guard DeAngelo Flynn followed with a 3-pointer with 3:31 left to give the Sabres a 51-50 lead.

Following a West Chicago turnover, Cole, a junior, notched an inside bucket and a traditional three-point play to stake the Sabres to a 56-50 lead with 1:10 remaining.

"We're an athletic team and we knew we could come back," Cole said. "We just got back in the flow, did what our coaches told us to do and ran our offense a lot better and we came out with the W."

It was the kind of confidence-buidling win the Sabres needed following three straight losses.

"We still have a lot to improve on, but we'll take it," Streamwood coach Paul Kowalyszyn said. "Down 15 and I thought we were playing awful on the offensive end of the floor. Once we cleaned that up a little bit and got to what we were supposed to do instead of what we felt like doing out there, we started chipping away."

The Sabres won the rebounding battle 29-18, including 11 offensive rebounds.

"That means we had 11 stops that led to 11 additional opportunities for them," Recchia said. "That's almost a quarter's worth of possessions."

Lamont Cole and Kevin Bauer each added 6 points.