Grant's group effort subdues Round Lake

With 15 players on the Grant varsity boys basketball roster, playing time is often tough to come by for everyone.

Not the case at Round Lake on Friday night.

The Grant starters built a huge early lead, and most of the second half was left in the hands of the reserves, who plowed on to a 69-50 victory.

Grant moves to 9-7 on the season, and 5-1 in Northern Lake County Conference play.

All 15 players on the roster got playing time, and 11 players scored for Grant, led by senior starting center John Kerr, who pumped in 19 points. Grant was up 21-7 at the end of the first quarter and had 21-point lead at halftime.

"We definitely came ready to play," Kerr said. "We just shut them down."

Reserve guard Nick Kouvelis was the only other Bulldog in double-figures. He scored 13 points.

"My mentality coming into the game was to do my best to help my teammates out," Kouvelis said. "The guys on the bench … we don't always get a lot of playing time, but I just try to go as hard as I can for as long as I can to prove that I can do what I do out there. I try to be aggressive and physical on the court and try to give energy off the bench.

"It's hard to be on the bench. We have a lot of talent on the bench. But we play as a team and when I'm not in, I like watching my guys out there. We play well as a team, whoever is out there."

Grant rushed out of the gates in the first quarter, rolling out to a 14-0 lead before Round Lake (3-15 overall, 0-7 NLCC) finally scored its first points, a putback by senior forward Zach Kuligoski with 2:44 left.

"We just started off flat," said Kuligoski, who scored a game-high 20 points. "We couldn't hit a shot, we weren't boxing out or playing good defense."

"I feel like we kind of got down on each other, which we really haven't done this season. But it was such a rough start tonight."

Angelo White and Chris Pierre also scored in double-figures for Round Lake. They each finished with 10 points.

"It was a bad start and one of our keys tonight was to have a good start and that didn't work out," Round Lake coach Jeremy Fisher said. "They were aggressive and made it hard for us and hopefully we learned from that today."

Grant started subbing out its starters late in the third quarter and they did not play at all in the fourth quarter.

"I'm proud of our guys," Grant coach Wayne Bosworth said. "It was really good defense that was key to that start. We were denying and able to take them out of what they wanted to do offensively. And everyone got to get on the court and be a part of it. I was happy for all the kids."