Boys Basketball: Defense does it for Oswego East

Updated: December 27, 2011 8:46PM

Oswego East’s boys basketball emerged from the holiday break playing some serious defense Monday against T.F. North in the opener of the East Aurora Holiday Tournament.

The Wolves cruised to a 53-38 win, holding the Meteors to 32 percent shooting from the field, including 2-of-14 shooting from three-point range, and had three players in double figures in scoring in the win.

“You’re not going to get much better (defense) than that,” Oswego East coach Jason Buckley said. “The one area of concern is the 23 turnovers, but our defense was really good. When you’re able to switch up your man-to-man and your zone and you’re successful at it, then you’ve got something there. Fortunately, we were able to do that tonight.”

Oswego East (5-3) was down 6-4 early, but CJ Vaughn helped the Wolves take over. He scored 10 of his game-high 17 points as part of a 13-0 run that gave them a 17-6 lead. A 12-4 run in the third quarter, sparked by seven points from Kenny Battle Jr. (16 points) pushed the lead to 35-15. Kalmon Stokes (11 points) added two thunderous dunks in the fourth quarter to put the exclamation point on the win.

“As a team, it depends on what’s going on,” Vaughn said of his team’s scoring. “I might be hot one day. Nick (Marema) could be hot one day. We like to feed the person with the hot hand.”

The Wolves face Belvidere North at 3 p.m. Wednesday in the second round, followed by a date with Aurora Central Catholic Thursday.

“If we play like we did tonight, we have a chance,” Buckley said. “We found a way today, and played really well. We played as well as we can while turning the ball over 23 times. We’re going to have to bring it tomorrow.”

© 2013 Sun-Times Media, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or distributed without permission. For more information about reprints and permissions, visit www.suntimesreprints.com. To order a reprint of this article, click here.