The blood from above Adam Bauer’s left eyebrow kept leaking enough that Cary-Grove’s big man had to keep hustling out of the gym to get his wound patched.

While he was away, his basketball teammates proved equally relentless. The Trojans proved unflappable without their leading scorer and rebounder. They kept coming, kept fighting against a Burlington Central team that showed it’s much better than the one the Trojans saw a month ago in Cary.

Despite his interrupted playing time – with foul trouble contributing to that as well – Bauer gutted out a 12-point, six-rebound effort. AJ Berndt scored a game-high 20 points, draining five 3-pointers, and C-G pulled out a 55-47 win Friday night in a Fox Valley Conference showdown that was tight throughout in Burlington.

“That’s a really good team, very well coached,” Berndt said after shooting 7 of 16 from the floor, including 5 of 8 from beyond the arc. “The way they trap and pressure, no team really does that in the Fox Valley, so it’s always fun playing against them.”

Bauer, who had a couple of tiny bandages applied above his eye after getting inadvertently hit in the first half, helped put the game away with a dunk off a fast break with 14 seconds left.

His cut was going to require stitches or glue to stop the bleeding.

“I’m extremely proud of him,” Berndt said of his teammate. “He played through it, had the big dunk at the end. He came up clutch, like he always does.”

Brady Bauer and Brandon Freund came up big in the fourth quarter as well for first-place C-G (23-3, 13-1), which retained its two-game lead over Crystal Lake South, while dropping Central (15-9, 10-4) to three games back with four conference games to play.

Freund hit his only shot of the night, a right-corner 3-pointer, to extend the Trojans’ lead to 41-36 less a minute into the fourth quarter. Brady Bauer canned a 3 from almost the same spot with 3:18 left, after freshman Declan Wilson’s three-point play got the Rockets to within 44-43 only 13 seconds earlier.

“We had to match physicality,” C-G coach Adam McCloud said. “I felt like our top guys again rose to the challenge. I can’t say nothing about AJ, Adam, Dylan [Dumele] and the rest of the guys just buying into those guys and playing off them. That’s what good teams do.”

Central lost to the Trojans 67-38 on Jan. 7, then reeled off nine wins in a row before losing 63-60 to Crystal Lake South on Tuesday night.

Friday’s game was tied 14-all after one quarter and 24-all at halftime, before C-G took the lead for good at 30-28 on Berndt’s fourth 3 of the night with 4:39 to go in the third.

Central wouldn’t go away, though. The Rockets were still within 50-45 with less than a minute left in the fourth after Bennek Braden hit two free throws.

“We switched up a couple of things schematically [offensively and defensively], gave the kids confidence,” Rockets coach Brett Porto said of his team’s play in the past month. “They’ve been playing really well with that, building off each game, and we’ve improved greatly. But we still struggle with size and rebounding.”

Dumele added nine points for C-G, while Brady Elbert grabbed six rebounds coming off the bench. The Trojans came in having beaten Huntley by only five points earlier in the week, after needing overtime to beat Dundee-Crown.

C-G is seeking its first FVC title since 2020.

“We know that we’re going to get every team’s best shot,” Berndt said. “Especially in this conference, every game’s a battle. It’s been fun, honestly.”

Braden led Central with 13 points and five steals. Patrick Magan and Wilson each had nine, and Ryan Carpenter scored eight.

“We’ve been playing better,” said Wilson, who also had six rebounds. “We’ve just been switching everything, jumping the passing lanes. These past few games we got to work on our rebounding. That’s probably our next adjustment.”