ROCKFORD — With a deep roster of scorers, Jefferson has used a familiar blueprint to take a 14-3 record into its J-Hawk MLK Showcase — full-court pressure defense and find at least one or two players to get hot.
It worked early Saturday in a 33-point win over Johnsburg. In the last game of the night Saturday, a talented Batavia team sliced through Jefferson’s press and shut down its shooters for a 75-66 win.
My’Quion Garrett, who scored 14 points, said Jefferson lost its patience when the shots weren’t falling early.
“We stopped moving the ball. We stopped driving and kicking (it for open three-pointers),” Garrett said. “We stopped getting back on defense. It was a lot of things.”
The Bulldogs crushed South Elgin earlier in the day, 74-43, powered by a barrage of 13 three-pointers, and they calmly handled everything Jefferson threw at them. Batavia built a 16-point lead in the third quarter only to see the J-Hawks cut it to seven on two occasions in the fourth quarter.
Each time the J-Hawks seemed to be ready to turn a corner, Jayden Johnson (22 points) would get open outside or a Bulldog would find Andrew Heinz (16 points) open underneath.
“What we’ve found in all four of our losses,” said Jefferson coach Todd Brannan, whose team is now 15-4, “is that when we don’t shoot well, it affects our defense. We didn’t follow the scouting report on who we needed to close out on. We didn’t rotate.”
The J-Hawks’ frustration showed throughout. Brannan blew through all five of his timeouts by midway through the third quarter and was given a technical foul in the fourth. Garrett’s fifth foul came on a technical. There was a double-foul late in the game when two players got tangled up, and a lot of talking throughout.
“Batavia is a really good team and that’s why we wanted to play them,” Brannan said. “They play a style we struggle with and they exposed some things. If we’re going to get to where we want to go in the playoffs, we’re going to run into them or a team like them.”
The J-Hawks were playing without senior guard Terry Ford, who is out for the weekend with a minor knee injury, but sophomore George Williams stepped into the starting lineup capably, scoring 11 points. Jy’Aire Robinson was solid with 16 points and Quillin Dixon also had 16. But Dixon had more fouls (three) than points (two) in the first half when Batavia seized a 34-23 lead.
Monday, the J-Hawks play Milwaukee Bradley Tech and South Elgin. The first varsity games of the MLK Showcase tip-off at 10:30 a.m.