Boys Basketball: Red Raiders escape McHenrey with hard-earned ‘W’

Updated: February 3, 2012 11:55PM

Getting a road victory was an important one for Huntley’s boys basketball Friday night, which put them a step closer to a Valley title.

But the way the Red Raiders did it left its coach Marty Manning shaking his head back and forth.

Huntley managed to get past host McHenry 34-29 in a Fox Valley conference Valley division game

“It’s been a consistent thing with our team,” said Manning, whose team improved to 19-2 and 8-0. “We play great on the defensive end of the floor and we play horrible offensively. With our talent, individually we’re not as good as we think we are.

“I thought this game was going to be tough, because McHenry always plays tough on their own floor. Usually, because they play well offensively. We did a great job defensively. But with the lack of execution, it almost makes me question our basketball skills or ability.”

Scoring was limited throughout the game and in the final quarter due to a number of turnovers which hit 45 for the game,

The Red Raiders stayed in front and outscored the Warriors 4-2 over the last 8 minutes.

Amanze Egekeze scored the final basket of his game-high 10 points in the low post with 18 seconds remaining.

“We were getting frustrated with the pressure,” Egekeze said. “We still won, but it was ugly. McHenry made it closer than it should’ve been. We did a lot better passing and hitting the open guys.”

Huntley started out with an 8-0 lead in the first couple of minutes and led 12-5 in the opening quarter.

McHenry (8-11, 3-5) bounced back as Damian Zalewski off the bench, scored 6 of his team-high 9 points during an 8-0 Warriors’ run, for a 13-12 lead with 5:16 left in the second quarter.

“For us to start out that strong and go inside,” Manning said. “We started shooting jump shots thinking those were the easy shots. It was really discouraging to see that.”

But Huntley’s Bryce Only scored 6 straight points of his own and the Red Raiders led 20-16 at the break.

Red Raiders increased its lead out to 26-19 on Egekeze’s short-jumper with 3:41 left in the third quarter.

The Warriors rallied back again, Shane Varvil made a lay up and capped off an 8-2 run that left McHenry down 30-27 heading into the fourth quarter.

“It was a good hard fought basketball game,” McHenry coach Tim Paddock said. “We just turned the basketball over at key times.

“We’ve been good defensively all year. We got the basketball in key situations. We just couldn’t get off a good shot (in the fourth quarter).”

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