West Aurora’s Traevon Brown never felt out of place on his new team after transferring last summer from East Aurora. There was, however, a transition period for the junior guard.
After he scored 19 points to lead the Blackhawks to a 58-43 win Saturday at DeKalb, it seems safe to say the transition is complete. Brown has found his comfort zone.
“It took me some time to adapt to the team, to find out where I could score and when to score,” he said. “Coach had told me to start being more aggressive and to not be so passive, because I’m a scoring guard.”
It shows.
Brown had a steal and 10 points in the first quarter against the Barbs (8-5). It included two of his three 3-pointers, giving him 22 3-pointers over his last five games.
“He’s been stepping up since Pontiac,” West Aurora coach Brian Johnson said. “He looks more comfortable than he was previously.”
That was true at the end of the first quarter when he keyed a 6-1 spurt that enabled the Blackhawks (10-4) to go from a 13-12 deficit to 18-13 lead in a mere three seconds.
Moshe Rogers started it by making a 3-pointer, then Brown stole DeKalb’s inbounds pass and made a fadeaway 3-pointer.
“That was awesome. That was the old Reggie Miller look,” Johnson said, referring to the former Indianapolis NBA great scoring eight points in 8.9 seconds to lead the Pacers to a playoff win over the New York Knicks in 1995.
“Traevon has hit some big threes of late.”
DeKalb, which lost 64-32 by West Aurora in November, kept it close into the fourth quarter. Senior guard Matthew Montavon came off the bench and scored a team-high 15 points.
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His jumper in the lane with 6:00 remaining cut West’s lead to 40-35, but Brown triggered a 6-0 run with a pair of free throws and alley-oop feed to Camron Donatlan for a layup on the break and the Blackhawks pulled away.
“(DeKalb) played a lot harder,” Brown said. “I felt like they felt like they had something to prove instead of just letting us dominate them.”
Donatlan missed Friday’s 66-52 win at home over West Chicago, sitting out for a violation of team rules. He also sat for the first quarter of Saturday’s game, but had 11 points off the bench.
Damian Virgen added 10 points and Jared Crutcher had six points, 11 rebounds and seven blocked shots.
“It’s hard to shoot over Jared,” Johnson said. “And then he’s good at leaving his man and helping and cleaning up the glass.
“Camron was on the bench last night, cheering on our guys and then he was ready to go tonight.”
Twitter @RickArmstrong28