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Rolling Meadows able to pull away from Conant

There was some talk during the Rolling Meadows walk through on Thursday about Conant's record.

And then that subject was quickly discarded, kind of under the "don't judge a book by its cover" adage.

Conant was winless on the season entering its first-round Jack Tosh Holiday Classic game against Rolling Meadows at York.

But the Mustangs refused to get caught up in that, and that turned out to be a smart approach.

"We talked about it in prepping for this game. We knew they were winless but we didn't want to think that we would just show up and beat them," Rolling Meadows junior guard Max Christie said. "We also knew that Conant always shows out for this tournament and that they have a great record all-time here. We wanted to make sure we came out and made a statement. But they hung in with us."

Conant, which has won the Jack Tosh seven times since 1996, including most recently in 2016 and 2017, held a lead over Rolling Meadows at the end the first quarter and led for much of the second quarter. But the Cougars ran out of gas as Rolling Meadows hit the accelerator in the second half. The Mustangs, boosted by a game-high 24 points from Christie, upped its record to 8-2 on the season and stayed in the winners bracket with a 68-52 win.

Conant is now 0-9 overall.

"They have played everyone really tough so far this season," Rolling Meadows coach Kevin Katovich said of Conant. "Conant has a nice tradition of basketball and we knew that, and Devon Ellis is a load, too."

Ellis is Conant's 6-foot-5 junior leading scorer. He had 17 of his team-high 21 points by halftime as the Cougars trailed Rolling Meadows by just 4 points (27-23).

"Our record really doesn't reflect how we play as a team," Ellis said. "We just haven't reached that point where we need to be as a team yet. And we've played some really tough teams, and we're just now getting healthy.

According to Conant coach Jim Maley, the Cougars have been plagued by injuries and illnesses this season. The Rolling Meadows game was the first of the season in which the entire starting lineup for Conant was healthy and able to play.

"It's been really tough so far," Maley said. "We've played a tough schedule and we've had a bunch of injuries and mono and all sorts of stuff going on. But we've been stressing that this is the first game all season where we've had everyone available. We've had a lot of interchangeable parts early in the season. But we think we can be consistent now and if we play like we did today for four quarters, we've got a lot of really good potential."

Rolling Meadows pulled away in the third quarter with a 12-2 run. Christie had 8 points in the period while Jonah Ogunsanya and Orlando Thomas had 5 points apiece, including a 3-pointer each.

Both Ogunsanya and Thomas finished with 12 points apiece.

Daniel Sobkowicz and Christie's freshman brother Cameron added 8 points apiece.

Conant also got double-figures from Daniel Hong (11 points).

"We made some adjustments at halftime," Katovich said. "They were getting a lot that we didn't want them to get, especially backdoors, so we made adjustments defensively and I think that helped us get back in the flow offensively."

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