Boys Basketball: Rough first half dooms East Aurora vs Schaumburg

Updated: November 25, 2011 8:46PM

The learning curve continues for East Aurora.

After suffering 30- and 22-point defeats in the first two rounds of the St. Charles East Thanksgiving Tournament, the Tomcats took the floor against Schaumburg hoping to turn that tide a little bit. While a 54-39 defeat sent them to 0-3 on the tournament and the season, East started seeing some positive signs.

“I think we have improved game-by-game,” East coach Wendell Jeffries said. “We need to get the young guys to play a full 32 minutes. The first two games we played a good first half, this game we didn’t play good in the first half but played well in the second.”

Trying to shorten the game against the taller, deeper Saxons, the Tomcats tried to slow the game down in the first two quarters. Instead, it led to a disatrous first half that saw East down 32-9 at the break. The Tomcats appeared a bit impatient against Schaumburg’s zone, turning the ball over 15 times while taking just 13 shots. East turned the ball over 10 times in the second quarter (27 times for the game) alone while being outscored 19-4.

“I wanted to slow the game down because I knew how good they were,” Jeffries said. “We took some ill-advised shots and looked ragged in the first half.”

East picked up the tempo more in the second half and returned to its slashing ways on offense and pressure defense. The result was a much better effort, as the Tomcats outscored Schaumburg 30-22 in the second half while forcing 12 Saxon turnovers.

Junior guard DeJon Talbert led the way for the Tomcats in the second half, nailing four 3-pointers and scoring 18 of his game-high 23 points.

“We played our game and competed with them,” Jeffries said. “He (Talbert) finally got some looks. Everybody knows he is our shooter and they have been taking that away from us, but we were able to give him some looks.”

East will play T.F. North in today’s 2:30 seventh place game. Schaumburg, which was paced by 13 points from Christian Spandiary and 11 from Mike Mallett, improved to 3-0 and will play for the tournament title.

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