Boys basketball: Harrington, defense propel Dixon past SoBos

DIXON – A career night by Darius Harrington and some stellar defense propelled Dixon to a 56-34 win over South Beloit on Saturday night at Lancaster Gym.

Harrington led the Dukes with 37 points, seven rebounds four assists and three steals and consistently made plays to not only build an early lead but expand it throughout the second and third quarters.

[ Photos from Dixon vs. South Beloit boys basketball ]

“For the most part, I think we set the tone and the pace for the game,” said Harrington, whose point total tied him for 10th on the Dukes’ all-time list for single-game scoring. “I thought we played really well tonight. We knew it was going to be a tough game, and I think we mentally prepared ourselves.

“We just moved the ball, dished it around really well, got it to the middle and got our open shots, and we got ‘our’ shots, the ones we wanted to take.”

Harrington assisted on Cullen Shaner’s 3-pointer to open the scoring, then hit a 3 of his own as he scored the next 14 Dixon points. He added another layup before halftime, then scored 12 straight Dukes points between a pair of assists to Bryce Feit on the baseline in the third quarter.

Dixon (16-3) led 10-2 after the first period, then pushed the margin to 22-9 by halftime and 46-22 after three quarters.

“It was a slow-paced game to start, and I thought we did a good job of ratcheting it up toward the middle just to get it going a little bit,” Dixon coach Chris Harmann said. “We dictated the pace and tempo, and when we’re able to do that, we can play in some different ways. I was happy with how we played tonight.”

The defense was as big of a story as Harrington’s career scoring night. Outsized down low by 6-foot-8 South Beloit standout Ross Robertson, the Dukes used a zone to make sure that they had a defender behind Robertson at all times and could drop down another defender in front of him when the ball rotated to Robertson’s side of the court.

Robertson finished with 12 points, nine rebounds, two assists and two blocks, but Dixon’s defensive scheme limited his touches, especially in the first half.

“To hold him to 12 points is quite an achievement by our guys,” Harmann said. “We just wanted to be around him, make sure he knew that we felt him and knew where he was. They’ve got shooters, and you’ve got to pick your poison; they’re a good team, and I thought we played really hard tonight.”

The Dukes also held their own on the glass as they outrebounded the SoBos 32-31 and got a body on the taller Robertson every time a shot went up.

“Their big kid is their leading scorer, and he’s good, no question. It was rough guarding him, but we had pressure around him,” Harrington said. “I thought we boxed out and rebounded pretty well. We could’ve cleaned it up a little bit more, but I thought we guarded him pretty well.”

Shaner and Mason Weigle each had five points, with Shaner grabbing five rebounds and Weigle dishing three assists. Bryce Feit finished with four points and six rebounds, Austin Hicks hit a 3 and added three rebounds and two assists, and Brady Feit chipped in a runout layup, four rebounds and two steals for the Dukes.

Trudane Peterson had 10 points and six rebounds, and TreyMon Payton-Ruff chipped in seven points and five rebounds for South Beloit (10-4), which showed some rust in its first game in more than two weeks, since before Christmas.

“It’s not going to be a good night for you against them if you’re not playing very good. You’ve got to play really well to compete and beat them, and we were just not good tonight,” SoBos coach Matt Stucky said. “They put a lot of bodies around Ross, and we didn’t do a great job of sealing guys and post-feeding and getting him more touches. We also didn’t do a good job with their pressure and handling the ball up top or attacking on offense.

“It showed that we hadn’t played for 16 days, and that rust was kind of expected, but it’s hard to have that against a team like that on the road. That’s a really good team, and it’s a hard team to be bad against.”