South Elgin slows it down, beats East Aurora
To get better prepared for the playoffs South Elgin boys basketball coach Brett Johnson has had his team slow down on their typical run and gun style the last couple of games to work more on their half court sets.
On Friday night that suited Vincent Miszkiewicz just fine. The 6-foot-6 junior just missed a triple-double with a career-high 31 points to go with 14 rebounds and 8 blocks to lead the Storm to a 74-54 Upstate Eight Conference Valley Division win over visiting East Aurora.
"He is such a tough kid," Johnson said. "He is just constantly active and moving on the floor. He wants every rebound and he is always working hard to get into position to score. The other kids just feed off his energy."
Miszkiewicz did all off his damage in the paint connecting 11 of 16 shots on strong moves around the basket, including 3 slam dunks. He was also 9 of 11 from the free throw line.
"I was just taking what the defense gave me," Miszkiewicz said. "When they gave me some space my teammates did a great job of finding me. When the defenders came up on me I just took it to the hole. We executed our plays very well tonight and made the extra pass. That was some thing we were doing at the beginning of the year with a lot of success. Then we kind of got away from it. Now we are starting to get our mojo back."
The game was tied 29-29 with just under 3:00 to play in the first half when South Elgin started to pull away with a 10-0 run to go up 39-29 just before the break. Miszkiewicz had a 3-point play during the run and David Binion scored 5 points on a 3-pointer and drive to the basket.
The Storm (15-7, 5-4) carried the momentum over into the second half outscoring the Tomcats 23-11 in the third quarter to extend their lead to 62-42. Miszkiewicz had 14 points in the third quarter to spearhead the surge.
"We put the petal to the metal," Johnson said. "There have been a few games this year where we had the lead and didn't finish. So it was good to see us finish and leave nothing to chance. I really liked the way we were moving the ball and scoring off our half court sets. We love to get out and run the floor, but we are also going to need to be able to score in the half court if want to go deep in the playoffs. So that is what we have working on the last couple games. The last time out it didn't go so well, but tonight we had a nice flow."
Binion added 18 points for the Storm. Drake Montgomery had 11.
After shooting at a 55 percent clip (12-of-22) from the field in the first half the Tomcats fell on hard times in the second half connecting on just 9 of 24 shots (38 percent) from the field. East (2-12, 2-6) was also plagued by 18 turnovers in the second half.
Jules Williamson led East in scoring with 17 points. Joshua Pryor added 10 points.