South Elgin storms back, beats Bartlett

With South Elgin trailing Bartlett 20-9 after one quarter, Storm coach Brett Johnson challenged his team to just want it more than the other guys.

The Storm got the message, outscoring the visitors the rest of the way and ending up with a 49-46 Upstate Eight win.

South Elgin fans stormed the court after the win over their rivals.

The Storm (6-11, 3-4) took its first lead at 47-46 on a corner 3-pointer by John Aaron Wafford with 1:22 to play. Drew Cwik then added 2 free throws as South Elgin closed the game on a 7-0 run.

Bartlett knocked down 8 of 11 first-quarter shots while taking a double-digit lead, but the Storm won every quarter thereafter.

"Coach just started yelling at us and said that we didn't want it as much as them," said Wyatt Steurer, who scored 8 of his 10 points in the second half. "He said that they had more energy than us. He just got us angry and pushed us to do better."

Bartlett went up 46-42 on a 3-pointer by Clark Lewis, but the Hawks wouldn't score again.

"I thought we let the emotion of the game kind of overtake us," said Bartlett coach Jim Wolfsmith. "We drove out of control, we dribbled too much trying to make the fancy play instead of just moving the ball like we did in the first quarter."

Kendis Wiley led a balanced attack for South Elgin with 12 points while grabbing 5 rebounds. Cwik finished with 11 and Wafford with 7.

After some close losses, the Storm was finally able to finish off a win.

"We've been falling a lot lately, so it just took a lot of passion and fight out of us," said Lane McVicar, who returned to the Storm lineup after missing several games with an injury. "We've been really low lately, so this was a big one for us."

"It was just the kids executing," Johnson said. "I think they buckled down and just decided that they wanted to work hard. Even at halftime, they understood that, 'we're fine. We're OK. We can do this.' It was good for the kids. They made some big shots. They did what they were supposed to do down the stretch, executed some of our sets a little better.

"We shared the ball as a team and when you do that, anything is possible."

Conrad Luczynski led all scorers with 13 points for Bartlett. George Betevis added 9, all on 3-pointers, and Hayden Angell scored 7 points for Bartlett.

Bartlett had a final chance to tie but Luczynski's 3-point attempt was off and Cwik corralled the rebound.