Egekeze leads Huntley over Burlington Central

Huntley's Uchenna Egekeze was drawn to iron like some sort of human magnet.

The 6-foot-3 senior guard drove for layups, scored on putbacks, threw down a nasty two-handed dunk and generally made things miserable for Burlington Central, which was trying to stop him.

Egekeze's longest made shots of the night came on four free throws. He hit 10 of 15 field goal attempts and scored 24 points as the Red Raiders defeated Burlington, 61-40, Friday night in their Fox Valley Conference boys basketball game.

"I felt like everything was going right," Egekeze said. "We were flowing pretty well offensively. It just felt like one of those games where I could attack. Coach (Will Benson) always tells me to attack the lanes, find any gaps. I thought it was one of those games where I could do that."

Huntley (11-3, 4-1 FVC) took awhile to shake off Burlington. The Rockets (9-5, 2-4) led, 31-30, after Zac Schmidt's layup with 5:10 remaining in the third quarter.

That was when the Raiders went on lockdown.

"We kept getting stops," Benson said. "We had a ton of stops in a row in the third quarter. And then, when we moved the ball a little bit, we started to score. We did a great job attacking the rim. Uchenna and (Ryan) Sroka were men tonight."

Sroka scored nine of his 13 in the second half to get the Raiders going.

"We executed really well in the first half," Rockets coach Brett Porto said. "We should have been up six to start the second half, we missed three or four layups. They got on a run and we played selfishly on both ends. Defensively, we didn't rotate the same way we did in the first half and offensively we had a couple 'my turn' possessions. We're not going to be very successful when we do that."

After trailing 31-30, Huntley went on a 24-4 run to put the game away. Ryan Crosby hit two 3-pointers in that stretch, Niko Mendoza added one and Egekeze and Sroka did the rest.

"It was our defense, and we were hitting shots too," Egekeze said. "We had a lot of momentum."

Burlington Central, which starts three sophomores, had Huntley's attention after it knocked off Crystal Lake South for a road victory just before the holiday break.

"They're a solid team," Benson said. "We had to play well to have it happen and we played well."

The Raiders got a boost in the second quarter from guard Ben Ahmer, who scored seven points off the bench.

"I got a quick bucket and I was feeling good," Ahmer said. "I got the 3 to fall and my third basket, I saw that I could take my defender and score, so that was basically it. We just kept getting stops and rebounds (in the second half), and handling their pressure really helped us."

Josh Hudgens scored 10 points and hit two 3s to lead the Rockets. Schmidt added 9 points.