Burlington Central holds off Yorkville Christian

Patrick Mayfield drove to the basket and scored. He hit pullup jumpers. He swished the net from beyond the 3-point arc.

The 6-foot-5 senior put on an offensive show in the first half and then helped his teammates deliver an impressive balanced attack in the second half as the Rockets turned away upset-minded Yorkville Christian, 62-57, in Thursday's second round game in the Plano Christmas Classic Tournament.

The Rockets advance to take on Peoria Notre Dame, which they defeated in the title game last year, in a semifinal on Friday at 7 p.m.

"In the first half I was getting everything to go and one thing I haven't done a lot of this year is trying to get my teammates involved," he said. "I've done it some this year, but today I was really looking for them and kicking it out whenever I was driving. That just helped us the whole game."

The Rockets (9-3) used an 18-0 run that began with three minutes left in the first quarter and ended with a 25-14 lead with 5:27 left to go in the first half.

The Mustangs (7-6) didn't have an answer for Mayfield and the Rockets and went into halftime trailing 36-25. Their deficit increased to 50-35 after three quarters and it seemed as if the Rockets were just a small scoring run away from breaking the game open once and for all.

"One thing we try to instill in these kids is we play until the very end," Mustangs coach Aaron Sovern said. "We went with a little zone trap, got some deflections and got the energy going and started knocking down some shots. And that's us. We never say we lose, we just say we ran out of time."

Burlington Central held the Mustangs to just 33 percent shooting (19-of-37) but still were only ahead 56-52 with 1:46 remaining as their 15-point lead shrank quickly.

"We knew they were very talented offensively and we had some matchup problems throughout the game," Rockets coach Brett Porto said. "I was pretty pleased with how we contained scorers for them for the most part and then they hit some pretty tough shots."

Jake Lenschow (8 points), Logan Andersen (10 points) and Seyller (11) also made some big ones in helping Mayfield (game-high 18 points, 9 rebounds) lead a balanced attack. There were 8 Rockets who saw action and all of them played at least 10 minutes.

"I thought we had some good rotations at times and guys hit some big shots for us so it was a very good team win for us," Porto said. "We feel like we have some guys that can definitely hit some shots and make some plays for us."