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A record shooting showing from confident Lakes team

All season, the Lakes boys basketball team has faced competitive opponents.

Though the Eagles surely would like to have come away with a few more victories, the quality of that schedule is now yielding a harder-to-measure positive: confidence.

Coming back from a close loss at Loyola Academy on Saturday, Lake rebounded with one of its best performances of the season, setting a couple of school records in the process.

Lakes shot past Mather 88-71 in pool play of the Loyola MLK tournament in play hosted by St. Viator in Arlington Heights on Monday.

The Eagles set program marks for most points in a game, and best field goal percentage. They shot 34-for-48 (71 percent).

Sophomore Tylor Gunther led the way with a career-best 21 points off the bench. Brad Cherry dropped in 20 and Logan McCann had 13 to go with 5 boards and 3 blocked shots.

Gunther canned three 3s in the first half and had 11 points at the break - a huge jump from his previous best this season, which was 5 points in an early game against Grayslake North.

"It was kind of crazy, and pretty unrealistic," said Gunther, who finished 7-for-8 from the field. "I've been setting little goals lately. I was really focused - that's something I lack sometimes. I was just confident out there."

Coach Chris Snyder hopes a combination of improved confidence and better execution will yield more wins in the season's second half.

"We've battled some good teams, and it's good for our guys to finally hit some shots," said Snyder, whose team is now 5-10 overall and 1-1 in the tournament. "It was a fun game, hitting the shots like we did. We like this MLK tournament, because most of them you play two games in one day. But this one, they spread them out on courts, on different days. It's a nice set-up. It was good to get one under the belt and get some confidence for the rest of the week."

Lakes next plays host St. Viator at 5 p.m. Saturday in the final round of pool play.

On Monday, the Eagles pushed the pace and went about hitting shot after shot right from the opening tip. Cherry tossed in 9 and McCann had 8 (with a couple of 3s) in the opening quarter for a 29-21 Lakes lead. The Eagles made 12 of their first 15 shots in the opening eight minutes.

"Everyone's confidence gets boosted up and we just started to do well offensively," Cherry said. "I think we were a little lazy defensively, but when we hit shots everyone gets excited. It's kind of funny, because we're a goofy group. For us to be on the record board, we can only build off of that."

The shots kept on falling in the second quarter, as the Eagles made 5 of their first 6 shot. Michael Behrendt (7 points) made a layup for a 44-24 Lakes advantage with 3:47 left, and the Eagles led 52-29 at the break. They made 8 of 11 shots from 3-point range in the first half(72 percent).

The starters got a chance to take a seat midway through the third quarter and for the rest of the game as Lakes built a 69-43 lead entering the fourth quarter.

Mather (1-7) had two guards lead their scoring: Leslie Lenoir with a game-high 26 points, and D'Andre Anderson with 25, including five 3s.

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