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KANKAKEE — The Bishop McNamara boys basketball team emerged victorious from a hard-fought Chicagoland Christian Conference game against Chicago Christian on Friday. The Fightin’ Irish overcame a slow start in the first quarter, and fought off a fourth-quarter push from the Knights, to win 77-65 at home.
The Irish improved to 19-4 overall on the season and 3-2 in conference play. They have won seven of their last nine games.
Chicago Christian came out of the gates hot on Friday, outsourcing Bishop McNamara 23-15 in the first quarter. The Knights extended their lead to 25-15 early in the second quarter, but the Irish outscored them 24-7 over the rest of the quarter, leading 39-32 at halftime and 56-44 after three.
Bishop McNamara head coach Adrian Provost said he was happy to see the team respond to Chicago Christian’s hot start and find more defensive success after the first quarter.
“Chicago Christian plays really hard, and obviously they started the game shooting the ball really well,” he said. “Part of that was them, and part of that was our poor closeouts and defense. I thought our kids adjusted pretty well in the second half. We got more stops.”
Those stops were often converted into quick offense for the Irish. They went on scoring runs on 7-0 and 15-0 in the second quarter after forcing more tough misses from the Knights.
Chicago Christian caught fire briefly in the fourth quarter and managed to cut Bishop McNamara’s lead to 68-64 with a little over two minutes to go, but the Irish mounted a quick 8-0 run to put the game back out of reach.
Provost said that the team is always looking to generate their scoring chances off of defensive stops and turnovers, and once they started doing that more consistently on Friday, they were able to put together those pivotal scoring runs.
“In the first half, specifically the first quarter, the ball was going in the hole for them so much that we could get no rhythm on offense, and then we were pressing on offense because we couldn’t get baskets,” he said. “We got multiple stops in a row and then we could get out in transition, and we ran some good halfcourt stuff. Just the flow of the game was much better for us in the second half.”
Four players scored in double figures for the Irish on Friday, helping the team score its sixth-most points in a game this season.
Cole Czako had the hot hand early on, scoring 13 points in the first half and finishing with a team-high 19 points. Callaghan O’Connor was productive in the paint, scoring 16 points, while Willie Felton and Trey Provost scored 12 points apiece.
Once the final buzzer sounded on Friday’s game, it left just three more conference games on the schedule for Bishop McNamara.
Adrian Provost said has liked the level of effort the team brings into each game, but they must maintain an equally high level of defensive consistency to finish up the season strong.
“We’ve got to get better on a consistent basis on defense, and we have to be intentional on defense every possession,” he said. “We’re just not doing that right now. We’re playing hard, we’re just not playing with the right intentions on a consistent basis. We just talked about that in the locker room, and we’re working on it.”