Lakes gets back on track
After winning 12 games in a row, and then losing its next two games, Lakes' boys basketball team wanted to get back on the winning track.
The Eagles did.
Barely.
They let an 11-point half-time lead slip away, but managed to hang on to a 65-61 victory over visiting Grant in a North Suburban Conference Prairie Division game on Tuesday night.
Lakes (14-6, 6-2) held a commanding 37-26 lead at halftime. But Grant (13-7, 4-5) kept chipping away at the lead.
The Bulldogs scored the last two points of the third quarter and the first eight of the fourth to take a 53-50 lead with less than six minutes left.
But Lakes came storming back, as senior Dan Kalb canned a layup, Kevin Rice converted two foul shots and Kevin Guirand scored on a rebound to give the Eagles a 56-53 lead with 3:50 left.
Grant came within 60-59 with less than a minute left, but Guirand clinched it with a layup and a foul shot.
"I thought that Phil did a real nice job by trapping us at halfcourt right out of a timeout," Lakes coach Brian Phelan said of Grant coach Phil Ralston. "Sometimes your guards can take a half-second off (mentally) and Trey (Williams) was alert. He made one pass to Kevin underneath for a 3-point play. That could have gone either way. They could have gotten a quick steal by us losing focus."
Guirand (16 points, 10 rebounds) and Williams (16 points, three 3-pointers) led the Eagles.
"We knew that Grant would come out to beat us, so we had to take our game to the next level,", Guirand said. "We just want to keep winning and help build the program".
Dan Kalb contributed 13 points for Lakes.
"This may have been one of our biggest wins, coming off the losses on Friday and Saturday (to North Chicago and Lake Zurich)," Kalb said. "Hopefully this is something to get us started again."
Grant's Mike Shields led all scorers with 20 points.
"We had the 3-point lead and we let it go with mental mistakes," Shields said. "They had two wide-open shots and that dug a hole for us. We couldn't fight back from that."
Marc Grischeau added 18 points for Grant and Curtis Oler had 10.
"I think it was the last couple of minutes (that it came down to)," Ralston said. "We did not do a good job of running our offense, (doing) the things that got us the lead. We were running our offense and getting high-percentage shots and we went away from it."