Volunteers overcome adversity, beat Rend Lake
INA - Those who have seen Jayden Scrubb in action knew a night like this was coming.
The highly-touted John A. Logan College freshman from Louisville, Ky., pumped in 40 points and grabbed 13 rebounds to lead the Volunteers to a 105-93 win over Rend Lake College in a Great Rivers Athletic Conference game at Waugh Gymnasium.
Logan was playing for the first time since moving up to No. 3 in the NJCAA Division I national rankings, the highest such ranking in school history. And the Vols won for the 12th straight time to improve to 16-1 overall and 7-0 in the GRAC.
Scrubb's performance, which included three blocks, came on 14-of-24 shooting that included 6-of-10 from 3-point range. The lanky lefty also went 6-of-7 from the foul line.
"I'm glad he's on our team," said Logan coach Kyle Smithpeters. "Jay's a fabulous player. To be doing what he's doing as a freshman is remarkable and his team leadership has grown so greatly. We saw very few freshman mistakes tonight from an 18-year-old freshman and that's the most impressive thing."
Scrubb's performance also included running the point for the final seven minutes after David Sloan was erroneously but officially given his fifth foul along with his fourth and disqualified from the game. Sloan was recently named the NJCAA's national player of the week after recording back-to-back triple-doubles.
"I felt bad because nobody does that on purpose," Smithpeters said. "It wasn't a purposeful mistake. But like I told the guys, we have to learn from it. It's no different than if he had gone down with an injury. We have to be able to handle it and learn from it."
Before being sent to the bench early, Sloan recorded 17 points and 12 assists. The turn of events led to a technical against Logan and Rend Lake trimming a 26-point deficit down to 10, but the Volunteers held on.
"It was good for us," Smithpeters said. "We managed to finish a game for almost 10 minutes without David Sloan, which we've always wondered if we could do. It was a good testament for our guys to handle that. We did a good job at times, a bad job at times, but overall we put up a lot of points against a very good team."
Chris Harris also helped run the point and tallied 14 points and six rebounds. Vonnie Patterson had his usual solid defensive effort along with 11 points and five rebounds for the Vols, who led 62-46 at the half.
Rend Lake's Rodley Adjei went off for 38 points but the Warriors fell to 11-7 overall and 3-5 in the GRAC.
"They kept fighting and didn't go away," Smithpeters said of the Warriors. "I told our guys when we watched film that they would be one the hardest-playing teams we would see all year. They play very hard and don't quit and they showed a lot of that tonight."
In the early game, the Logan women extended their win streak to four with an 83-70 win over Rend Lake. The Lady Vols are now 10-7 overall and 5-2 in the GRAC.
Logan built a 20-point lead in the first half and held on after Rend Lake pulled within eight points.
Marion's Nia Marshall had a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds. Lyric Campbell led the Lady Vols in scoring with 19 points, while Alicia Hornbuckle had 15 points.
Both teams return to action Saturday with road games at Lincoln Trail College in Robinson starting at 1 p.m.