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Boys Basketball: Elgin pushes past Batavia
Updated: February 9, 2012 12:44AM
Elgin didn’t exactly snap out of its recent funk Wednesday night, but it did notch a valuable Upstate Eight River win at the expense of struggling Batavia.
The Maroons labored through three quarters before finally breaking things open with a run of 14 straight points to start the fourth in a 65-51 victory that sent the visiting Bulldogs to their 12th straight defeat.
Continuing a recent trend, Elgin (18-3, 6-3) seemed out of sorts for much of the night as it failed to pull away from a Batavia team that was without standout senior Cole Gardner. The big man was confined to the bench after tweaking his nagging right knee injury prior to the game, but his teammates managed to keep things close until the Maroons cranked up the defensive pressure and started executing in transition down the stretch.
“In the fourth quarter I saw a glimpse of the kind of defense we had earlier in the year,” Elgin senior Kory Brown said. “We caused turnovers, we got hands on balls and we got steals. That’s what we need to do. That’s our key to winning basketball games and we haven’t been playing defense like that lately.”
Brown finished with a game-high 19 points, 10 rebounds and four blocks. He also tallied five assists, with three coming in the fourth quarter as Elgin scored 23 points after managing only nine in the third.
The Bulldogs trailed 42-36 going into the fourth after holding the Maroons to a lone field in the final four minutes of the third quarter. Elgin finally came alive early in the fourth as Gerardo Mojica scored four of his 16 points to help spark the his team’s 14-0 run.
Devin Gilliam also had a pair of buckets during the surge as the Maroons opened their largest lead of the game at 56-36 on Brown’s basket with 3:30 left.
“We’ve got to keep the intensity up because intensity wins games,” Mojica said. “If we don’t blow out a team, that’s not a win for us. A win for us is if we step on the other team’s throat.”
Elgin certainly didn’t bury Batavia (4-17, 1-9), which held its own after falling behind 10-2 in the first three minutes of the game. The Bulldogs pulled within three midway through the second quarter and trailed 33-28 at halftime. Batavia even managed 15 points in the fourth quarter after going scoreless in the first 4:52 of the period.
Jake Pollack led the Bulldogs with 15 points. Mike Carlson added 14 points and Micah Coffey had 12 points.
“It was all positives the whole game,” Batavia coach Jim Roberts said. “A lot of guys stepped up. We’ve just got to keep working.”
Cortez Scott finished with eight points and Gilliam tallied eight points and four steals off the bench for the Maroons.
“Consistency is a problem,” Elgin coach Mike Sitter said. “Right now we’re a tough team to figure out. I’m tired of playing psychiatrist.”
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