Playing against the odds
Never doubt the perseverance of hoopsters.
As long as you've got five basketball players united in a common goal, anything's possible.
This week's edition of Eyes on Five looks at some true believers.
1. View from the top:
When Lake Park's boys basketball team claimed last season's DuPage Valley Conference title, few were shocked. An experienced crew coming off a solid postseason run, the Lancers were expected to be contenders.
This year's group believed they'd vie for a repeat championship, but few outsiders knew about the remaining talent after four starters graduated.
Well, here's Lake Park back at the top of the DVC standings. Two games shy of the midway point in the conference slate, it's a bit surprising to see the Lancers (11-4, 5-1) tied for first with Naperville North.
"We feel pretty lucky to be tied for first right now," said Lancers coach Josh Virostko. "It's nice that we do control our own destiny."
Winners in nine of their last 10 games, the Lancers are surging with an offense better than last season's and a defense trying to match that team's intensity. Returning starter Dan Hynes, leading scorers Kenny Bogus and Bailey Vance, and post player Mitch Jarosinski lead the charge.
We'll find out soon if Lake Park has the staying power to win the DVC again. The Lancers travel to Neuqua Valley - a place they haven't won at in a decade - on Friday, and then play host to Naperville Central, a game back in the standings, on Saturday.
If the Lancers survive the next two weeks, they'll face a pivotal week against sectional rival Conant - a team on the short list for the top seed at Fremd - and Naperville North, which beat Lake Park by 3 points in the first meeting.
"You always want to be playing meaningful games in January and February," Virostko said. "That's what nice about the position we're in right now."
2. Anatomy of a loss:
Downers Grove North's boys basketball team came incredibly close to handing Glenbard West its first loss last Friday.
How close? There were three specific moments in the final seconds where the Trojans could have ended it with a 43-42 victory.
The Hilltoppers, however, improved to 15-0 on Justin Pierce's buzzer-beating bucket.
Here are the moments ...
1. Pierce missed a jumper and the Trojans' Devin Blake grabbed the rebound. Blake went to the ground and was whistled for traveling with 3.7 seconds left. If the Trojans had been awarded a timeout before the traveling call, Downers North likely would have claimed victory.
2. Pierce was fouled with 2.2 seconds left but missed both free-throw attempts. Two Downers North players battled for the rebound but the ball slipped out of bounds. Had one of them been able to corral the ball, it's game over with a Trojans victory.
3. On Alex Passi's inbounds pass for Pierce's game-winner, Downers North's Bowen Marks nearly perfectly timed a leap to knock away the ball. He just missed it, though, allowing Pierce the two-handed tip shot. If Marks managed a mere fingertip on the ball, it's probably game over with a Trojans victory.
That's three painful chances for Downers North to pull out an epic victory. Instead, it became a memory for the Hilltoppers that won't soon fade.
3. Good news, bad news:
The good news for the Wheaton Warrenville South's and Glenbard South's girls basketball teams: Both are competing for conference championships as they head into the second half of the league season.
The bad news: Both will have to do it without their best player.
The Tigers lost senior captain Erin Madigan last week to a torn ACL, a game in which the remaining Tigers greatly impressed coach Rob Kroehnke by hanging in to defeat Wheaton North. They have a one-game lead in the DVC over Naperville Central, with Neuqua Valley and Lake Park two games back in the loss column.
Madigan not only was the Tigers' best ballhandler and defender, she was their leading scorer and rebounder.
"Kids are going to have to step up," said Kroehnke, whose team lost its first DVC game of the season Tuesday to Lake Park. "That's all there is to it. We'll just have to keep grinding this thing out. It's been a great year. We'll keep going."
The Raiders lost senior captain Payton Carli to a spiral fracture in a finger, coincidentally also at Wheaton North.
Like Madigan, Carli is out for the basketball season. Unlike Madigan, who also plays soccer, Carli hopes to return for her spring sport. Carli, a three-sport athlete, plays softball in the spring.
The Raiders are in a battle for the Metro Suburban Conference West Division, in which they are one game behind league leader Riverside-Brookfield. The Raiders handed Riverside-Brookfield its only league loss this season.
The Tigers are very young - three freshmen and two sophomores were on the court together late in the loss to Lake Park - but the Raiders are even younger.
Carli's absence leaves the Raiders with a rotation of five sophomores and a freshman. That's right, no juniors or seniors seeing regular playing time for the varsity.
"It's been rough," Glenbard South coach Morgan Kasperek said. "They're a really solid, coachable group of kids, but they're young."
4. Dedication game:
Lake Park's girls tried something new last week, at least to them.
They dedicated their home game against Waubonsie Valley to someone special in their lives. They had a ceremony the day before the game involving the team and those special people, and kept the theme going during the game.
"We wrote them a letter," Lancers coach Brian Rupp said of the people to whom they dedicated the game. "We delivered them a rose and the letter before the game. Even then we had girls coming back to the bench crying. It was a subtle thing - we made some posters for them, we had announcements during timeouts who we were dedicating the game to."
The idea is about teaching a life lesson to go along with the basketball lessons.
"I think we grew as a team because of it," said Rupp, who dedicated the game to his nephew Jackson, who passed away at age 2 from a brain tumor in 2009. Jackson was represented at the team ceremony by his mother, Rupp's sister.
"It was a real emotional day. We had a few people crying before the game. There were a lot of feelings going around," said senior Jordan Bradley, who dedicated the game to her step-brother's mother, who died of cancer when he was 3.
Don't be surprised if this becomes a team tradition.
"It was good because it gave us a lot of motivation going into that game, and we won pretty big," Bradley said. "It made everybody play at a whole different level than we normally do."
"It was a cool moment for us," Rupp added.
5. Stat time:
Congratulations to Benet boys basketball coach Gene Heidkamp on his 200th career victory, a milestone reached during Saturday's Wheaton Warrenville South Martin Luther King tournament.
In his eighth year at Benet and his 11th overall as a head coach, Heidkamp has piled up victories at a remarkable pace the last seven years. His teams have averaged 25 wins the last six years and with 16 wins already this season, the Redwings are on pace for their seventh straight 20-win campaign.
Not too shabby.
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