Fenton starts fast, wears out Blazers

Fenton's boys basketball team continued its wave of quality play Saturday afternoon in the opening game of the Glenbard West Holiday Classic.

The Bison built an 18-4 lead over Addison Trail after one quarter before weathering an offensive lapse, eventually hanging on for a 49-38 victory in Glen Ellyn.

Junior Billy Gratzl set the tone early for Fenton (4-6) with 10 first-quarter points, and all five Bison starters got on the scoreboard in the opening period.

"We played real well on Friday, particularly in the second half," Fenton coach Dennis Cromer said. "It was almost a continuation of that."

After the Bison established the early 14-point lead, though, things got a bit shakier.

"We kind of went flat a little bit, and it started with us missing a few shots we hit in the first quarter," Cromer said.

Addison Trail began cutting into the lead in the second quarter, holding Fenton to just 9 points.

According to Cromer, the Bison's missed opportunities on offense gave the Blazers the confidence to get back in the game.

"With a team like Addison Trail, if you give them a reason to be confident, it kind of picks them up a little bit," he said. "When we missed a couple, they hit a couple, and they closed the margin a little bit. They felt they were getting back into it, and that whole pattern kind of continued into the third quarter."

The Blazers sliced Fenton's lead to 31-28 late in the third quarter before running into another cold spell on offense. Addison Trail failed to register a field goal for the first 6:23 of the final period, allowing Fenton to build another double-digit lead.

Blazers (1-9) coach Brendan Lyons offered a simple answer for determining his team's success or failure.

"It's just our energy level," Lyons said. "We have to just flat out outwork everybody. (In the third quarter) our energy level was there. I think we understood that it was a now-or-never time, but the thing we also have to understand is that we can't get to the point where we're down 14 or 15 points.

"As soon as we get down like that, it's really tough for us to climb back."

Gratzl's hot start propelled him to a game-high 15 points for the Bison. Senior Vince Beachem paced Addison Trail with 12.

-- Matthew McClarey

Timothy Christian 73, West Chicago 33: West Chicago and Timothy Christian both had distinct goals in their first game at the Glenbard West boys basketball Holiday Classic on Saturday.

West Chicago coach Kevin Gimre sought to be in striking position in the fourth quarter.

Timothy Christian coach Jeff Powers' main goal was for the Trojans to stop dribbling the ball so much, pass it up court and take quicker shots.

Timothy got what it wanted, making nearly the number of field goals West Chicago attempted in a 73-33 Trojans victory.

Using somewhat of a two-platoon lineup, nine of Timothy's 10 players scored at least 6 points with Andrew Logan and Joel Sytsma pacing the squad with 12 and 10 points, respectively.

"Hopefully teams can't set up on defense and we can get something going right away," Powers said.

Saturday they did for sure.

Timothy Christian (7-7) led 18-4 after a quarter and was up 32-8 late in the first half when West Chicago's Chad Driscoll hit a pair of free throws to get the Wildcats into double digits. Driscoll's 8 points led West Chicago.

"If your shots don't fall early -- especially for us at this point -- we tend to lose a little bit of confidence," said Gimre, whose club shot 2-for-16 in the first half and fell to 0-11 on the season.

"Then on the other hand," he said, "Timothy Christian shot very well, so they go on that confidence."

Along with forcing 23 turnovers for the game and 15 in the middle quarters, Timothy Christian shot 32 of 68 from the floor while holding West Chicago to 11-of-39 shooting.

A couple times during the game Powers swapped out his taller starting five including 6-foot-5 Sytsma and 6-4 Peter Tameling, for a unit that offered quick types like 5-6 "Mighty Mouse" Logan and 5-9 Daylan Anderson.

The dual approach worked splendidly for the Trojans, who led 55-19 after three quarters.

"I think that the way coach did that tonight was the perfect mixture, and it showed as the end result. It felt good to actually play as a team," said Anderson, who scored 9 points.

Powers said: "They were all sharing the ball, they were all working hard, so we decided they would all get the minutes that way."

-- David Oberhelman