Palatine jumps on Yorkville early to reach Tosh quarterfinals
Palatine and Yorkville met in York High School's South gym Tuesday evening for a quarterfinal berth in the Jack Tosh Holiday Classic.
By the time the game's first quarter had come to an end, the Pirates had gained game control that it never let go despite the Foxes throwing a little bit of a late scare en route to a 69-55 win in round two play. The Pirates return to Elmhurst Wednesday evening to face Lyons Township in a 5 p.m. tip at Campbell Gym in the quarterfinals.
Lyons (9-0) earned its Tosh quarters ticket beating Timothy Christian (5-7) 69-35 in the final game of night two at the South gym.
"We didn't finish the game we wanted to but you've got to give credit to Yorkville for that." Palatine coach Eric Millstone said. "You don't get to the position they're in by rolling over. We took advantage of the momentum of the first 2 1/2 to 3 quarters but give credit to Yorkville. That's a really skilled team that made a nice run."
The Pirates (10-2) made a nice run in the opening minutes of play after an inside hoop by Yorkville's Jason Jakstys got them on the board first, Palatine rolled off 13 consecutive points beginning with a Sam Millstone 3. Tyler Swierczek followed with a putback then Connor May and Quinn Golletz succeeded Swierczek with back-to-back triples after which a May field goal completed the run.
The Pirates would lead 17-6 after one and expand their advantage at the half to 37-17. Their peak lead came at 50-21 on May's fourth trey of the evening with 4:35 left in the third.
After a driving layup by Millstone gave Palatine a 57-36 lead just 41 ticks into the fourth, Yorkville (10-3) would go on a 19-7 scoring binge that got them within 64-55 on an 18-footer by Jakstys (team-high 19 points) with 1:27 left. Four consecutive Tommy Elter free throws and a successful Swierczek charity toss ended the night's scoring.
May (30 points) paced the victorious Palatine effort with his second straight 30-point plus performance after scoring 32 against Wheaton North on Monday.
Swierczek added 21 for the Pirates along with Elter scoring 8 points with a game-high 9 assists.
Jakstys (11 rebounds) and Jory Boley (17 points) led the way for the Foxes who face Timothy Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. in their third Tosh game.
Yorkville coach John Holakovsky spoke of his team's early struggles.
"At halftime we had to regroup a little bit," Holakovsky said. "We talked about how this isn't who we are. We're a team that competes. We're a team that takes pride in being the aggressive team and being the physical team. The team that takes people out of what they do. Just their pressure, their length and their size knocked us back a little bit to start. Once you have a few turnovers and they're hitting a bunch of 3s, I think it kind of snowballed a little bit and we were just trying to get to halftime."