Boys Basketball: Chicago Christian stops Guerin Prep’s surge

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Guerin's Joe Binkowski puts up a shot over several Chicago Christian defenders, during Saturday's game.| Jerry Daliege~for Sun-Times Media

Updated: February 2, 2012 4:11PM

Chicago Christian’s early lead almost vanished in the second quarter, but the Knights recovered to secure a 57-36 victory over Guerin Prep in their Suburban Christian Conference Blue Division game on Saturday night in River Grove. The Knights Mike Kamp scored 16 of his game-high 22 points in the first half. They came out hot early scoring the first seven points of the game en route to a 13-4 lead after one quarter.

“Things probably came a little bit too easy to us at the start,” said Chicago Christian head coach Kevin Pittman. “We got complacent on defense and were not fundamentally sound. We rushed shots and basically took a quarter off. We’ve been focusing on putting together four good quarters of basketball. I feel fortunate that we were able to still win because when the momentum shifts like that it’s hard to get it back.”

Kamp kept things going for the Knights (8-14, 2-6) scoring the first eight points of the quarter as the Knights went on a 9-0 run to take a 22-4 lead with just three minutes gone in the second stanza. Then, the Gators (3-12, 0-6) started a furious comeback led by sophomore Joe Binkowski. He scored seven of his team-high 11 points in the final 3:30 of the quarter to bring the Gators back to within six points at halftime.

“We dug ourselves quite a hole from the get-go,” said Guerin assistant coach Jim Duszak, who took the reins in place of head coach Marcus Green, who missed the game for family reasons. “I just chalk it up to youth. We play a lot of underclassmen, but I won’t use it as an excuse.”

Guerin scored the first three points of the third to cut the lead to just three and did so again with 2:15 left in the quarter on sophomore Anthony Marra’s three-pointer. He finished with nine on the night. Chicago Christian would recover in time, though scoring the final four points of the period and pulling away in the fourth. Junior Corey Bulthuis had 10 points in the game while senior Calvin Visser notched nine.

“We came in wanting to do things right on defense,” Kamp said about the team’s recovery. “We came out like we did in the first quarter with more intensity and effort, and we needed to be more mentally strong.”