BOYS PIAA BASKETBALL Elk County Catholic eliminates Kennedy Catholic from tourney

The Crusaders rolled easily past the Eagles 67-34.
By BILL ALBRIGHT
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
CLARION -- Any way you look at it, last night's PIAA Class quarterfinal matchup between Kennedy Catholic and Elk County Catholic belonged to the Crusaders.
Three times in the past 11 years, Kennedy ended ECC's season with a loss in the Western semifinals before the Crusaders found the formula for victory over the Eagles. Although it took them four tries to get through the Kennedy Catholic roadblock, the Crusaders advanced to the PIAA Class A semifinals with a convincing 67-34 victory over the Golden Eagles.
"I never looked at it as us having a monkey on our backs," said ECC coach Aaron Straub. "We didn't prepare any differently for this game tonight than we did the other games with them. I think the big difference was that tonight, we executed our game plan as well as we could have."
Going into the game, Kennedy coach Tim Loomis knew if the Crusaders did some things well, his club could be in for a long night.
"I saw them play five times and I knew if they would shoot the ball well, we would have problems," Loomis said. "I just felt the tempo in the first two or three minutes dictated a lot of what was going to happen. They seemed hungrier and they seemed a lot quicker than we were tonight."
Game close early
The first 10 minutes of the game was about as close as it could have been, showing two ties and eight lead changes. As a result, the two teams were deadlocked at 14-all.
But the Crusaders began taking control of things, building up a 29-20 lead at halftime en route to outscoring Kennedy 53-20 over the final 22 minutes of the game.
Kennedy's David Jackson picked up his second foul after scoring eight of Kennedy's 10 points in the opening period.
"[Jackson] had to stay out of foul trouble if we were going to stay in the game," said Loomis. "The calls [against Jackson] weren't the difference in the game, but they were the difference in his being out of the game. We had to take a risk and put him back in there, and when I took him back out with a minute and 40 to go, that was the difference in the game. It was a four-point game and just like that, it went to nine."
Even though his club trailed by nine at the break, Loomis felt if a couple of things might have happened, it could have been a different game.
"It was a game early and I thought at halftime, if we could come out and stick the ball inside two of three times we would be right back where we wanted to be," he said. "But unfortunately the simple fact is that we weren't able to do that."
Roof caves in on Eagles
Still only trailing by 11 (36-25) three minutes into the third period, the roof caved in on the Golden Eagles as ECC outscored the District 10 champions 16-2 in the final five minutes of the period to stretch their lead to 52-27 heading into the fourth quarter.
Jackson finished with 18 points and drew high praise from Loomis.
"The seniors have been wonderful," he said. "With Rodey coming out to help the team out when he did, you just don't find young guys like that any more. And in my 20-plus years of coaching, David Jackson is the most coachable player I have ever coached. There is no doubt in my mind that he will be very successful in college [at Penn State]."
For ECC, Josh Salter came off the bench to score 17 points, 15 in the second half. Jesse Bosnik added 15 and Tony Lecker had 11.