GENESEO — Johnny Beck was closing in on an all-time scoring achievement as the Rochelle varsity boys basketball team prepared to wrap up its road victory against Geneseo on Monday.

Needing one more basket in the final seconds, Beck anticipated an alley-oop transition pass off the backboard from junior teammate Austin Brown. Some confusion led to a missed shot instead, but Beck cleaned up the mess with an easy layup, surpassing 1,000 career points as the Hubs defeated the Maple Leafs 75-58 and improved to 12-16 overall.

“Garrett [Burdin] said something about it at halftime but I wanted to keep it out of my head so I wasn’t forcing up shots in the second half,” Beck said. “My teammates poured water all over me after the game and I got soaked. It was fun and everybody was really supportive.”

Rochelle narrowly escaped Geneseo the first time around, winning 71-68 at home on Jan. 11. The Hubs hit the road on Monday with the goal of slowing down Geneseo standout Isaiah Rivera, who went for 39 points during the first encounter between the two Northern Illinois Big 12 West opponents.

Rivera finished with a game-high 34 points on Monday, but the junior made only 14-of-33 field goals on the evening. Beck said Rochelle’s plan was to force Rivera into taking perimeter shots as opposed to allowing him to score near the basket.

“We want to take the ball to Rivera and we want to show him that he can’t single-handedly beat us,” Beck said. “They came back during our first game because we were fouling too much and they were able to make their free throws. Nobody else was playing like Rivera did, though, and he didn’t have his best game the second time around.”

Rochelle led Geneseo 31-25 at halftime on Monday before outscoring the Maple Leafs 44-33 in the second half. The Hubs shot nearly 50 percent from the field, with Beck scoring a team-high 23 points while grabbing eight rebounds and blocking three shots. Junior Landan Martin totaled 15 points on 6-of-10 shooting, six assists and six rebounds.

“We knew we would run zone against Rivera, and we were trying to figure out how to avoid letting Rivera break our zone down,” Beck said. “We wanted to make sure he was kicking the ball out if he got into the lane instead of getting easy layups. He scored most of his points on offensive rebounds, but we were OK with that because he wasn’t making jump shots and he wasn’t getting easy drives to the basket.”

Brown and sophomore Garrett Burdin combined for 22 points, nine rebounds and four assists. Senior Kaleb Ackland led the Hubs with 10 rebounds while recording nine points.