South Elgin succumbs to Prospect's size

When your outside shots aren't falling, it sure helps to have a couple of big guys who can dominate inside.

Enter 6-foot-6 Prospect front court players Kevin Reed and Alex Toth.

With the Knights and visiting South Elgin both colder than the temperature outside, Reed, Toth and 6-foot junior Jason Leblebijian helped Prospect hold off the Storm to score a 45-31 non-conference boys basketball victory in Mount Prospect Tuesday night.

Leblebijian and Toth both scored 11 points, and Reed's (10 points) surge early in the fourth quarter stonewalled a South Elgin rally.

"I was worried about this game," said Prospect coach John Camardella. "I wondered what our energy level would be after a disappointing weekend. Buffalo Grove and Glenbrook North really took it to us, but I'm proud of our guys to come out and play the way they did tonight."

Senior forward Stephen Carter led the Storm with 8 points, while 6-9 center Daniel Lopez contributed 5 points and 9 rebounds.

"Shooting," said South Elgin coach Chaz Taft when asked about the big reason for the loss.

"We just had a bad shooting night. We missed layups, point blank shots, a lot of bunnies. It just wasn't there for us tonight."

The Storm hit only 1 of 13 from 3 point range.

"It was an awful shooting night by both teams," agreed Camardella.

Toth scored 7 points and recorded 4 of his 6 boards in the third quarter as Prospect opened a double-digit lead but when the senior went to the bench with 4 fouls, South Elgin (5-5) closed the gap.

Three-point plays from Jeffrey Lewis and Erik Stade brought South Elgin to within 31-27 after three quarters.

Then Reed took over in early the fourth. The junior grabbed a rebound that led to Prospect basket, swatted away a South Elgin attempt and hit a layup at the other end, then made a sweet feed to Pat Ziegenfuss for a layup that brought the lead back to 10.

"(After their run) we talked about getting back to what was working for us," said Toth. "We worked hard and got some open shots."

Free throws from Leblebijian and Jeff Heiden (7 points) helped close out the game for the Knights (5-5).

"We got close," said Taft, "but close doesn't cut it for us any more.

"We executed our sets and got open shots, but you've got to hit those open shots. We talk about holding our opponents to under 50 and we did that, but it doesn't do much good when we can't score 50."