With 6-foot-9 junior Jeffrey Hassan in the middle, all-state point guard Marshawn Cocroft and several talented shooters, the Kaneland boys basketball team is difficult to defend.

The Knights displayed all their options Tuesday.

Hassan scored all 11 points in Kaneland’s 26-point second quarter and the Knights drained six 3-pointers in the third quarter as they pulled away for a 91-50 victory over Mendota in a nonconference game in Mendota.

“We have some guys who can shoot the ball and when you have Jeffrey inside, they have to kind of pick their poison,” Kaneland coach Ernie Colombe said. “If they come in to help on Jeff, we kick it to shooters. When we get in a rhythm, we’re tough to guard. You throw in we’ve got an all-state point guard, we can put pressure on teams. I thought we just kept attacking them and our guys executed tonight.”

The Knights led 15-9 at the end of the first quarter before starting to pull away in the second.

Kaneland held the Trojans scoreless for the first three minutes of the second quarter. Meanwhile, the Knights got a fast break basket from Brian Edwards, a bucket from Isaiah Gipson and a three-point play by Hassan to push their lead to 22-9.

“We started playing harder on defense,” Hassan said. “We started playing more as a team. Once we started racking up more stops, we started to connect on offense and started to finish.”

Hassan threw down a dunk on an alley-oop inbounds pass and had two more dunks in the quarter as Kaneland’s lead ballooned to 41-22 at halftime.

“On offense I just tried to play with a harder motor,” Hassan said about his second quarter play. “I called for the ball. I just played to my strengths.”

Out of the break, the Knights got hot from outside as Jalen Carter and Connor Kimme knocked down back-to-back 3s to extend the lead to 20.

Evan Frieders, Cocroft and Chase Kunzer also hit long-range shots in the third as Kaneland took a 69-39 lead into the fourth quarter to start the running clock.

“We shoot a ton in practice,” Colombe said. “That’s what we believe in. The kids like seeing the ball go through the hoop. Our philosophy has been you can get kids to play really hard on defense if they’re getting better on offense. It’s tough to ask a kid to go play defense and then they never get a shot. So we want all our guys ready to shoot the ball if they’re going to play that hard on defense. It’s kind of their reward for playing hard defense.”

Mendota coach Steve Wasmer said he wasn’t too concerned about a lopsided loss to Kaneland, which is ranked No. 5 in Class 3A by Nesto Hoops.

“I told the guys in the locker room that I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep about it and nor should they,” Wasmer said. “That’s a really, really good 3A team that could make a state run. I’m not real worried about the things we did. There’s a lot of little things we need to take care of and coach. Hopefully, they’ll be coachable tomorrow and I think they will. It’s a good group of kids.”

The Trojans fell behind 13-2 but went went on a seven-point run to close within 13-9.

“I told our guys that’s the best team we’re going to play all year and it’s not really close,” Wasmer said. “It was good for our kids to see the physicality, to see the ball movement they had and to see how they got after it defensively. The best thing I think happened tonight is we played in a really physical game and we didn’t back down. The first quarter, I think we matched them physicality wise, and then we just got tired.”

Cocroft had a team-high 14 points for Kaneland (2-0), while Hassan, Carter and Gipson each had 11.

Cole Tillman scored a game-high 19 points for Mendota (2-1), while Dane Doyle added 10.