Grayslake Central powers past Lakes

There is confusion in the halls at Grayslake Central nearly every day.

When students are caught walking behind an unusually tall, lanky classmate with dark hair and a buzz cut, they think it's CJ Stempeck, a 6-foot-6 senior forward on the boys basketball team. So they'll call out “Hey CJ!”

But, to their surprise, CJ often turns out to be Casey Boyle. And vice versa.

Boyle is a 6-foot-8 junior forward on the basketball team who looks remarkably similar to Stempeck, aside from the fact that Boyle has sideburns and Stempeck doesn't.

“People mistake us all the time,” Stempeck said. “It's pretty bad, but it happens.”

Chances are, it happened again Saturday night at Mundelein High School during Grayslake Central's Thanksgiving tournament game against Lakes.

It's unlikely that Lakes could keep Stempeck and Boyle straight either.

All the Eagles knew was that they were getting burned equally by both of the Rams' big boys.

Boyle scored a game-high 20 points and Stempeck finished with 18 points to lead Grayslake Central to a 74-61 victory that brought out some big sighs of relief.

Not only did the Rams overcome a nine-point first-half deficit, they also shook a big monkey from their backs. The win was Grayslake Central's first of the season. The Rams are now 1-3.

Meanwhile, Lakes, which was also searching for its first victory, drops to 0-4.

“Their big guys worked us pretty good with their high-low action,” Lakes coach Chris Snyder said. “We had a hard time guarding that. We talked to our big guys and told them that they were going to have to be ready for that, that they were going to have to come and play tonight because not only are those guys from Grayslake Central big, they're really physical guys as well.”

Usually, Grayslake Central coach Brian Moe uses Stempeck and Boyle in opposite rotations so that his team always has a big post player on the floor and so the two can spell each other.

But this time, Moe elected to play his big men together more, and they loved every minute of it.

“It's really great playing with CJ,” said Boyle, who scored 7 points during a stretch that helped Grayslake Central cut its 9-point second-quarter deficit to 4 points before halftime. He also pulled down a game-high 10 rebounds and put an exclamation point on the win by scoring the Rams' last bucket of the game on a thunderous dunk.

“I like the big-man combo,” Boyle continued. “It opens everything up for us. Some teams have only one big man so one of us is going to be open (on a mismatch) every time.”

There are openings elsewhere, too.

With so much defensive attention focused inside, Grayslake Central's guards were able to get very good looks at the basket, and junior guard Jordan Taylor took advantage.

He rolled up 19 points for the Rams.

“Jordan on the perimeter is hard to guard,” Moe said. “He's got a knack (for getting to the basket) and he also did a nice job of (penetrating and) dishing off to a big (man).

“Both CJ and Casey were really aggressive out there and I think we found that good things happen when CJ and Casey are together.”

Meanwhile, Lakes also got double-digit scoring from three players, led by Nick Hibbing. Hibbing had 18 points on 4 three-pointers while Tanner Blain finished with 15 points and Jay-Jay Elvir added 10 points.

Yet, Grayslake Central still managed to out-score Lakes 20-9 in the fourth quarter.

“We played real strong in the first half (in building a 37-28 second-quarter lead), but we didn't carry that momentum into the second half,” Hibbing said. “They came out (from halftime) with fire and we came out a little flat.

“We believe in the plan that Coach Snyder has for us. As soon as we eliminate the little mistakes that we're making, we're going to end up doing real well.”