Boys Basketball: Oswego East Battles to top Plainfield South

Updated: February 10, 2012 9:46PM

If stranded on an island with two people, Oswego East senior Kalmon Stokes said they’d be Chuck Norris and David Hasselhoff.

With Stokes marooned on the bench after picking up two fouls in the first 42 seconds of action against Plainfield South, it was fellow senior Kenny Battle Jr., who led the rescue operation.

Battle converted 17-of-18 free throws en route to scoring a career-high 33 points to spring the Wolves to a 73-64 victory in Friday’s Suburban Prairie Conference contest.

“I hadn’t had a game like this in awhile,” Battle said. “With it being senior night and the foul trouble, I knew I had to step up as an individual.”

Oswego East (12-11, 5-7) wasn’t slowed by Stokes’ departure. The Wolves jumped ahead to an 8-0 lead and didn’t allow the Cougars to light up the visitors column of the scoresheet until 6-foot-7, William Nixon (14 points) scored with 3:53 remaining in the first quarter.

The Wolves went ahead 20-10 after one quarter and led by as many as 16 points in the opening half before heading into halftime with a 35-21 advantage.

“It was a different mindset from our guys tonight, starting with Kenny Battle Jr. getting it deep and finishing the layup or getting to the free throw line,” Oswego East coach Jason Buckley said. “Then it spilled over to Nick Marema, C.J. Vaughan and T.J. Miller. We knew we could get layups if we got a couple reverses and forced them to move more on defense.”

Plainfield South (12-10, 7-5) had plenty of fight remaining though as they rallied to outscore the Wolves, 23-15 in the third quarter, to pull within 50-44 entering the final quarter.

Then, the Cougars closed the gap all the way down to a 52-50 deficit on a three-point play by Edvinas Presniakovas (26 points) with 6:27 left.

“We just kept out heads focused when that happened and played to the best of our abilities,” Battle said. “We couldn’t worry about the score so we just thought of it as 0-0 and played our game.”

The Wolves answered with a 9-0 run as Marema drained four straight free throws before Battle laid one in off a steal and then seemingly put the game out of reach with a three-point play with 4:24 remaining to make it 61-50.

“You have to give credit to them,” Plainfield South coach Ken Bublitz said. “They took the ball strong to the rim, they finished and they were able to get to the foul line and make their free throws.”

In fact, the Wolves converted 30 of 34 attempts while the Cougars struggled with a 7-for-17 effort.

There’s a joke that states when Chuck Norris shoots a free throw, someone else to pay. On Friday, it was the Cougars who paid when the Wolves made 30.

“We look a lot smarter when Kenny’s shooting all the free throws and he’s 80 percent on the year,” Buckley said. “So that’s a no-brainer and good things happen when the ball is in his hands.”

Marema added 15 points and nine rebounds and Vaughan contributed 11 points for the winners. Additionally. Jimmy Bitner had four points and five rebounds, and played valuable minutes and defense in place of Stokes.

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