First quarter burst helps La Salle-Peru top Ottawa, 67-51

OTTAWA — The La Salle-Peru boys basketball team found itself down seven points to rival Ottawa in the opening two minutes of Friday’s Interstate 8 Conference game at Kingman Gym.

But out of a timeout, the Cavaliers put together an 18-0 run to close out the quarter and an 8-0 spurt to end the first half. Then in the second half had the answer for every burst the Pirates could muster and eventually posted a 67-51 victory.

L-P improved to 9-9 overall and 2-1 in the league, captured a fourth straight win in the matchup and now lead the historic all-time series 145-109.

Ottawa dropped to 7-8 and 0-3 with its second loss to L-P this season after dropping a decision at the Plano Christmas Classic.

“We have had a lot of games this season where we had leads, just didn’t finish and ended up losing by a few points,“ L-P coach John Senica said. ”Our goal for this new year is to finish. We didn’t do it the other night against Sycamore, and again, we were right there. We talked tonight about starting toward that goal and the kids made it happen.

“I thought everyone that played made a positive impact for us. We did a lot of the little things that is takes to win games, especially on the road and especially here.”

Freshman Marion Persich had 21 points and eight rebounds, while senior Mikey Hartman registered 20 points, five rebounds and four assists for L-P. The Cavs also received 11 points and seven rebounds from Nick Olivero and 10 points and eight rebounds from Erick Sotelo.

L-P finished 24 of 48 (50%) shooting, 8 for 19 (42%) from beyond the arc and held a 42-20 advantage in rebounds.

“This was the most fun game I’ve ever played in,” Hartman said. “The atmosphere was great and the gym was loud. I know it’s not our home gym, but this is a great place to play.

“At Plano we didn’t really play great defense in the first half and then did better in the second half. Tonight, other than the first couple of minutes, I felt like we did a great job of staying with our man and rebounded well.

“I felt like Erick Sotelo hitting that 3-pointer out of the timeout down 7-0 really got everyone going. It just felt like everything we shot was going in.”

Ottawa shot out to a 7-0 lead in the open two minutes with hoops from Owen Sanders and Hezekiah Joachim and a triple by Kyler Araujo.

L-P responded with Sotelo’s 3 before Persich scored nine points and Hartman six to help give the visitors an 18-7 lead.

Ottawa used a 9-0 run, including six points from Sanders, to close to within 25-22, but the consecutive treys by Olivero and Sotelo and a drive by Persich in the final 30 seconds pushed the lead to 33-22 at halftime.

“The run they had in the first quarter and again at the end of the first half were big keys,” Ottawa coach Mark Cooper said. “We had a few times in the second half where we put together a little spurt, but L-P seemed to be able to counter that and never really let us get all the way back into striking distance. Playing from behind isn’t an ideal position to be in and that’s what we were doing much of the game.”

After a back-and-forth third, Ottawa narrowed the gap to 54-47 on an and-1 by Evan Snook with six minutes remaining, but from there a rebound hoop by Andy Medina and consecutive layups by Olivero and Hart over the next three minutes extended the L-P lead back to double digits.

Sanders finished with a season- and career-high 22 points to go along with 10 rebounds, four blocks and a pair of steals. Snook and Joachim added seven points each. Ottawa finished 20 of 55 (36%) from the field, including 5 of 20 from beyond the arc.

“I thought our guys played extremely hard, competed and did a lot of really good things, but when you are -22 in rebounding and the opponent shoots 50% it’s going to be tough to win games,” Cooper said. “L-P played very well on the offensive end, and give them credit, they made shots.”

L-P is back in action at 3 p.m. Saturday at Mendota. Ottawa is off until next Friday when it is at Sycamore.