{"id":102197,"date":"2025-12-28T03:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T03:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/102197\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T03:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T03:05:08","slug":"marshawn-cocroft-kaneland-overwhelm-timothy-christian-with-pressure-roll-into-plano-semifinals-shaw-local","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/102197\/","title":{"rendered":"Marshawn Cocroft, Kaneland overwhelm Timothy Christian with pressure, roll into Plano semifinals \u2013 Shaw Local"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the two-time defending champions of the Plano Christmas Classic, Kaneland<\/a> knows it has a big target on its back again this holiday season.<\/p>\n

Timothy Christian had its eyes set on that target during Saturday\u2019s second round game against the Knights, but succumbed to overwhelming defensive pressure as Kaneland rolled to a 65-33 victory.<\/p>\n

Marshawn Cocroft seized control of the game for the Knights. He did offensively, scoring a game-high 22 points while dishing out five assists and committing a single turnover, and defensively, snatching five steals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know every night, no matter what team we play, they are going to try their hardest and try to beat us because everyone wants to beat us,\u201d Cocroft said. \u201cSo we just know that every night we got to come out hard and take them out in maybe the second or third quarter. We got to shut them down quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaneland (11-0) advances to Monday\u2019s semifinal at 7 p.m. against LaSalle-Peru. Last season, the Knights beat the Cavaliers three times.<\/p>\n

Timothy Christian (6-5) led early as Marc Gamble\u2019s three-pointer from the top of the key with 2:20 remaining in the first quarter gave the Trojans a 10-9 lead.<\/p>\n

\"Kaneland's<\/p>\n

Kaneland’s Jalen Carter (Chris Walker)<\/p>\n

The lead would last a half minute as Kaneland\u2019s Jalen Carter, who scored 12 points, hammered home his second of his four three-pointers to spark a 14-0 run that would culminate with his third three of the game with 4:44 left in the second quarter for a 23-10 lead.<\/p>\n

The Knights led by double figures the rest of the afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe drill shooting a lot at practice and spend probably over half the time just shooting, getting shots up and what we do in practice correlates to what we do in games,\u201d Carter said. \u201cWe definitely brought a lot of energy and I think that helped us with our focus and just playing together. And we were all locked in today. Pretty much every time we play, their goal is to stop Marshawn so as a team we have to figure out ways to score without Marshawn because when they\u2019re guarding him we have to play our part and hit those open shots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Timothy Christian was able to keep Kaneland\u2019s 6-foot-9 big man, Jeffery Hassan, from scoring from the field until 5:40 remained in the third quarter, but his first of five baskets allowed the Knights to double up the Trojans, 38-19. <\/p>\n

Hassan finished with 17 points and a game-high eight rebounds. <\/p>\n

The Trojans could not avoid Kaneland\u2019s turnover-minded defense, with Cocroft leading that attack, seemingly glued to wherever the ball took him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a little bit of a David versus Goliath here tonight, but I thought we battled with them for the first 13-14 minutes of the game,\u201d Timothy Christian coach Peyton Wyatt said. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnce the live ball turnovers started to happen it snowballs and that was a key for us. I said guys throw this thing out of bounds before we give it to them. They\u2019re just really elite when it comes to live ball turnovers, it\u2019s NBA-type stuff where it\u2019s two points. They\u2019re just big and athletic and turnovers are their best offense and it\u2019s easy to say don\u2019t turn it over but it\u2019s another thing to actually do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carter\u2019s final three-pointer with 7:11 remaining ignited the running clock with a 57-27 lead.<\/p>\n

Fighting through foul issues, Gamble led the Trojans with 10 points and six rebounds. Charlie Crichton added eight points.<\/p>\n

\u201cMarc is playing at a really high level right now,\u201d Wyatt said. \u201cHe\u2019s playing the best basketball of his career right now and it\u2019s awesome to coach him.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a new adventure for the Trojans who played at York\u2019s Jack Tosh last year at this time.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll look to bounce back against Ottawa on Monday at 3:30 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the two-time defending champions of the Plano Christmas Classic, Kaneland knows it has a big target on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[35359,160,162,161],"class_list":["post-102197","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\/102197","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=102197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}