Elgin Academy bows out of regional

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Elgin Academy's Connor Flexman grabs a rebound over Hinckley-Big Rock's Zach Michels during Wednesday's Class 1A regional game in Hinckley. | Mike Mantucca ~ For Sun-Times Media

Updated: March 28, 2012 10:19PM

Elgin Academy and host Hinckley-Big Rock faced two far different kinds of pressure during Wednesday’s Class 1A basketball regional semifinal.

As the No. 1 seed, Hinckley-Big Rock’s pressure is that anything less than convincing victories and a regional championship will be deemed as a failure. For No. 4 seed Elgin Academy, it didn’t have a solution for the Royals defensive pressure.

Hinckley-Big Rock scored many easy baskets off of turnovers and cruised to a 75-40 victory.

“Our defense helped us a lot and most of our offense was off of our defense,” Hinckley-Big Rock junior Jared Madden said. “If it wasn’t for that it would’ve been a closer game.”

Madden led the Royals with 22 points. Hinckley-Big Rock advances to the championship game at 7:30 p.m. Friday and will play Westminster Christian.

Hinckley-Big Rock (23-6) turned a 6-5 lead with 5:03 remaining in the first quarter into a 28-9 lead with 6:15 left in the first half as its full court press completely frustrated the Hilltoppers.

“We kind of got out of our game plan a little bit with guys running away from the ball,” Elgin Academy coach Dewayne Robinson said. “That’s when they made their run and basketball is a game of runs. Some guys get out of it and some battle back and that was the run that took us out of it.”

Elgin Academy (9-15) constantly found itself trapped and surrendering the ball back to the Royals who converted numerous easy layups and jumped to a 40-19 lead at halftime. There was more of the same in the third quarter as the Royals increased the lead to 67-28.

“It was kind of just a jump trap,” Robinson said. “If we had guys like Tom Brady, we could’ve thrown it right over them, but you can’t beat a press like that.”

Zach Michels added 12 points, while Mitchell Hemesath and Bernie Conley each contributed 11 points for the Royals.

“You can tell that we like to feed off the crowd,” Madden said. “It’s a lot of fun when you can go on a big run like that and break the game open.”

Connor Flexman, who surpassed 1,000 points in his career earlier this season, led the Hilltoppers with 18 points and fellow senior Joe Heisley added 12 points.

“There guys are my brothers after four years,” Flexman said. “It’s tough getting beat like this in my last game but I’m glad for the guys that stuck with me. It was a good career.”