Hersey rebounds past Buffalo Grove

Hersey sophomore Justin Jobski showed how much his work at boarding school has paid off in Friday's key Mid-Suburban East boys basketball battle with visiting Buffalo Grove.

The 6-foot-2 Jobski outrebounded the Bison by himself in the first half and finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds as Hersey (11-7, 5-2) pulled out a 65-60 victory at Ken Carter Gymnasium in Arlington Heights.

"He was a good work-hard rebounder but not a good box-out rebounder," Hersey coach Steve Messer said of Jobski's improvement.

"I used to jump straight up and I'd always get out-jumped," Jobski said after scoring off half of his 6 offensive rebounds. "Now I'm putting my body into people and boxing out and moving them out of the way. It's made me a better rebounder."

Jobski wasn't the only one for Hersey as it won for the fifth time in six games to stay two games behind Prospect in the East race. Tom Sutrinaitis (8 points, 8 rebounds) scored twice off misses.

And after Jobski split 2 free throws with 2:52 left to break a tie, Kyle Miklasz (11 points, 6 rebounds) scored off the miss in a 7-point run that put the Huskies up for good at 56-49.

"All we worked on in practice was rebounding," Jobski said of Hersey's 42-25 advantage. "The coaches kept putting it in our heads to box out. It was a big issue for us."

The smaller Bison (11-8, 4-3) trailed Jobski 10-7 in rebounding at halftime.

"I thought defensively we were better than we've been playing," said BG coach Ryan O'Connor. "But you couldn't tell by the score because they had so many possessions due to the offensive boards."

BG also had to fight through Kevin Mulligan (13 points) fouling out with 3:53 left and John Angotti with 42 seconds left. Leading scorer Nick Prus also had foul trouble and had 5 points on 1-for-9 shooting behind the arc.

"All those things considered we're right there," O'Connor said as the fourth 3 by Jeff Zabrin (14 points) got BG within 58-55 at 0:45.

Hersey led 60-55 when a foul and a technical foul with 33 seconds left gave BG a chance to take the lead. But it missed a 1-and-1 and only got 2 Prus free throws out of it as Jordan Mertes (17 points) helped seal it by forcing a turnover and hitting 4-of-4 free throws in the last 18 seconds.

"You can still see we're not fixed," Messer said. "We're still an incomplete team."