Lake Zurich 62, Round Lake 55

Lake Zurich fans must be over the moon about Connor Mooney, who might as well have been shooting from there on Tuesday night.

Mooney canned 8 three-pointers in Lake Zurich's North Suburban Conference crossover against Round Lake and never came within 2 feet of the arc.

His incredible range yielded him 30 points and Lake Zurich a 62-55 victory.

The Bears improve to 14-11 overall heading into their regular season finale on Friday. They'll host a make-up game against Grant (7:30 p.m.) that was postponed earlier this season because of a snowstorm.

Round Lake, which got a team-high 25 points from a similarly red-hot Vernon Randolph, drops to 7-21 overall.

"I was surprised he could hit from that far," Randolph said of Mooney. "We're not used to anybody doing that at this level. He's tough. We played the best (defense) we could. We contested the shots. But he's a great shooter."

It just took some time for Mooney to warm up.

He opened with a sluggish first quarter in which he missed all six of his shots. But then he connected on 9 of his next 17 shots and was 8-of-12 from 3-point range.

His eight 3-pointers was just 1 shy of a school record.

"When I shoot, I really don't look at where I am," said Mooney, who admitted that he isn't sure exactly how far his range extends. "It's just a feeling that you get and you know you can let it fly.

"At the beginning of the game, my shot was off. Coach (John Zarr) told me to keep shooting and I didn't think twice about where I was."

Despite Mooney's shooting woes in the first quarter, Round Lake's advantage heading into the second quarter was just 13-11. But the good news for the Panthers was that even though Mooney lit them up for four 3-pointers in the second quarter, they were down only 31-28 at halftime.

"We were never out of this game," Round Lake coach Jeremy Fisher said. "I just told the guys that even if (Mooney) hits a couple of big shots, we can still compete, we can still chip away at the lead. And for the most part the kids did a nice job of doing that.

"I think my kids played as well as they have all season. We just couldn't turn the corner in this game."

Mooney made sure of it with another amazing showing in the third quarter. He hit 4-of-5 three-pointers then.

But Mooney wasn't Lake Zurich's only weapon.

With Round Lake's defense extended abnormally far to cover Mooney, the Bears got the ball inside often to Brandon Kunz and Andy Garlisch, who finished with 16 and 10 points respectively.

Meanwhile, Round Lake also got double figures from Jerome Brown (11 points) and Mike Mpokota (10 points).

"We were dealing with a lot of athletic ability out there tonight and our team handled the situation quite well," Lake Zurich coach John Zarr said. "We had a few guys play well. But there's really no substitute for good shooters.

"Connor is an outstanding shooter. He has the green light. He's the one person on our team that has the complete green light to shoot from anywhere."