Adams stars as men’s basketball pulls away in second-half thriller

Photo by Marcus Collins

By Joey Fernandez, Sports Editor

What started as a slow defensive battle ended in three-point specialist Kobe Adams’ 36-point explosion as the Cyclones beat Elgin Community College 86-69 Tuesday night.

The victory avenged Moraine’s 78-73 loss to Elgin last month.

With Elgin using a stout 1-3-1 zone defense, the game turned into what seemed to be literally and metaphorically a tale of two halves.

Moraine ended the first half with a closely contested 35-33 lead. Heading into the locker room, the coaching staff knew that changes needed to be made on the offensive end.

Coach Aaron Green said the team decided to switch up the offensive strategy and adapt to a different style to take down the tough defensive zone.

The important thing, Green said, was “not letting them sit in their zone to where we can’t get any offensive continuity. We tried to beat the zone and if we didn’t beat it, we swung the ball and got good shots.”

Photo by Marcus Collins

The Cyclones take the ball up the court as they look to expose Elgin CC’s vaunted 1-3-1 zone.

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The adjustments made at halftime turned out to pay dividends. Moraine’s strong defense continued while the offense had a swift increase to 51 points, nearly 50 percent more than in the first half.

This outbreak in scoring was led by Adams and his 36 points on 14-30 shooting from the field.

Adams knew he had the hot hand right away.

“As soon as I came into the game I felt good and I knew I was going to keep shooting the rest of the game,” he said.

The rest of the team also realized the strategy needed to revolve around getting Adams the ball to shoot over the zone defense.

Sophomore guard Isiah Burd recognized the streak of buckets that Adams had and let the offense run through him.

“I saw he had the hot hand and I had to keep feeding him,” Burd said.

As for an overall grade for the team’s play, Coach Green gave a conservative answer.

“We played at about a B today. We can get a lot better on defense,” Green said. “On offense we moved the ball in their zone and we shared the basketball tonight.”