St. Charles East rolls over South Elgin
St. Charles East's boys basketball team created havoc for South Elgin Wednesday night.
Using a relentless full-court press and double-team trapping, the Saints (2-0) forced 40 turnovers during their 84-56 triumph over the Storm (0-2) in the second round of the 61st annual Ron Johnson Thanksgiving Tournament in St. Charles.
"That's what we've got to do with this team," Saints coach Patrick Woods said of his team's defensive ball pressure. "That was our intention going in, to play as fast as we're playing."
St. Charles East led 14-12 after the first 8 minutes before kicking it into another gear in the second quarter.
Senior guard Scott Breidigan canned back-to-back 3-pointers and teammate Luke Matheny added a pair of midrange jump shots during a 10-0 run that propelled the Saints to a double-digit lead at 22-12.
St. Charles East led 35-22 at the intermission.
"My role is to do anything I can to help the team," said Breidigan, who came off the bench to score 14 points with four 3-pointers and 4 steals. "Any of us can get hot on any given night. I think that's going to make us really hard to beat this year."
The Saints stretched their lead to 56-37 after 3 quarters, forcing 12 more Storm turnovers.
Senior forward Sean Sullivan tallied 9 of his 16 points in the period while Breidigan added 5 points, including another 3-pointer.
"Scott has been really good off the bench," Woods said of Breidigan. "And Sean (Sullivan) scored 16 points in 12 minutes.
"We had nine guys who played 10 minutes or more and another who played nine minutes. We're playing a lot of guys and we feel we can."
St. Charles East recorded 26 steals, many of which led to easy baskets. Senior guard Zack Clodi led the way with 6 steals while Matheny added 5.
"I love the energy we're playing with but we've still got things to clean up," said Woods, whose team takes on Proviso East (2-0) Friday night. "As the season wears on, people are going to be more prepared for us but I just don't know if they have the bodies in terms of getting up and down the floor."
Matheny scored a game-high 17 points for the Saints, who received 51 points from its reserves.
"You're looking at a bunch of best friends who like playing basketball together," said Matheny.
Lane McVicar led the way for the Storm with 12 points.
"We just went through this on Monday (loss to Proviso East) and we lost the game because we didn't take care of the ball," said South Elgin coach Brett Johnson. "We stressed that St. Charles East was going to apply that same kind of pressure.
"We had 40 turnovers. When you're going to give the other team 30 more shots than you, they're going to win the game. When our guards account for 25 of those turnovers, you can't win. The effort was there but they're going to have to grow up real fast."