\u201cWe\u2019ve been working on trying to get the ball moved around more, getting into our actual offense, and I thought we played pretty damned good defense,\u201d L-P coach John Senica said. \u201cI\u2019m going to be honest with you, I was a little afraid. We\u2019re coming out of Christmas, and you don\u2019t know what the heck you\u2019re going to get.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019ll tell you, I\u2019m very proud of them and how they played today. Right from the get-go, they were focused, zeroed-in and did what they had to do to get the win.\u201d<\/p>\n
L-P (7-2) shot just over 50% from the field in the opening quarter and just got better from there, finishing a scorching hot 63.6% (28-of-44) to leave the Braves (1-9) in the dust.<\/p>\n
Thanks to excellent transition game play, selfless passing and a consistent ability to knock down the open shot after they\u2019d created it, the Cavaliers led 17-10 by the close of one quarter, 37-18 by halftime and had kicked in the 30-point continuous clock in time for the start of the fourth quarter with a 62-32 advantage.<\/p>\n
Gavin Stokes drained his last seven shots \u2013 four of them 3-pointers \u2013 to finish with a team-high 21 points to go with his seven rebounds. Jameson Hill added seven points and three steals, Braylin Bond and John Sowers each scored six points on 3-for-3 shooting, and Marion Persich finished with 16 points, seven rebounds and five assists.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been really up and down lately,\u201d said Persich, who scored all 16 of his points over the game\u2019s opening three quarters. \u201cSometimes we\u2019ll have really good games; sometimes we\u2019ll have really bad games. But I think today we just came out and shot the ball really confidently.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were just running through the plays, and defense really fires us up. When everyone\u2019s playing together, it\u2019s just great basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Marion](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/EDMPILEFCNABXCIQ2PCNAOAQBM.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Marion Persich (J.T. Pedelty)<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our offense was creating that [efficiency],\u201d Senica said, \u201cand we were way overdue. We\u2019ve got a lot of good shooters on the team, and we have not shot very well all season so far. I think we\u2019re finally starting to get over the hump of our shooting slump.\u201d<\/p>\n
While La Salle-Peru couldn\u2019t miss on one end of the court, on the other Bremen struggled throughout. The Braves finished shooting just 25.5% (12-of-47) from the field, not getting much outside of a 19-point, five-steal effort from Kishawn Gantt and 11 points off the bench courtesy of Carter Luster.<\/p>\n
Their inability to slow down the Cavaliers was just as costly.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefensively, we didn\u2019t execute the game plan, stopping the gaps,\u201d Bremen coach Amir Ross said. \u201cWe let them get a lot of open 3s. We just weren\u2019t consistent enough tonight. …<\/p>\n
\u201c[To bounce back Saturday in a matchup with Northridge Prep,] I just think we need to have more energy and be better with communication.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers face a familiar foe in Saturday\u2019s championship quarterfinals, squaring off against archrival Ottawa, itself a 61-39 winner over Northridge Prep immediately before L-P took the floor Friday. Saturday\u2019s opening tip is scheduled for 5:30 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Be it a break from routine with school out of session, playing in an unusual site at an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[35359,160,162,161],"class_list":["post-101907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-illinois-high-school-boys-basketball","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}