Meadows falls to Lake Park
Lake Park had a nice combo going at the Fenton Thanksgiving Tournament on Wednesday.
Senior Danny Baylis and junior Matt Drufke provided Lake Park with a powerful 1-2 punch and senior Lucas Antioho delivered the knockout blow, leading the Lancers to a 63-40 victory over Rolling Meadows in Bensenville.
Lake Park (2-1) held a 17-12 advantage entering the second quarter but Meadows (1-2) narrowed the deficit to 20-19 with 5:42 left before halftime.
Drufke converted 3 consecutive turnovers by Meadows into 6 points, igniting a 17-2 run to propel the Lancers to a 37-24 halftime advantage.
"We were just trying to get into some passing lanes and force them to do things they didn't want to do," said Drufke who tied Baylis for scoring honors with 17 points apiece.
Meadows had 10 of its 17 turnovers in the first half.
Antioho (10 points) grabbed a game high 11 rebounds as Lake Park had a 33-19 advantage.
Will Trunk and Ted Metzger had 9 points each for Meadows.
"We turned the ball over way too much," said Meadows coach Kevin Katovich. "Then they killed us inside. We need to do a better job of boxing out. We didn't have an answer tonight."
Meadows will play Libertyville for fifth place at 3:45 p.m. Friday. Elk Grove (0-3), which lost 57-51 to Glenbrook South, will play Fenton for seventh at 2 p.m.
Wheeling 56, Niles N. 51: Michael Barton and Wheeling were struggling as halftime approached in a consolation bracket game with Niles North in Niles West's Billy Schnurr Tournament.
But Barton hit his first shot a few feet inside the half-court stripe at the buzzer to get the Wildcats (1-1) within 8 points. Barton went on to score a team-high 15 points to put them in Friday's 4 p.m. consolation championship against Rich South.
"We kind of fed off the momentum into the second half," Wheeling coach Lou Wool said of Barton's shot.
Barton hit three 3s and James Kurtz scored 13 points. Robert Carter had 9 points and 12 rebounds and Ryan Fallon and Mike Zimmer added 8 points apiece.
"The big difference (the second half) was we took a lot better shots," Wool said. "We took a lot of crazy shots the first half and weren't running our offense."
Rich South 61, Palatine 46: Nat Pearson had 11 points and Michael Orris and Mykyta Cheshko added 8 apiece for Palatine (0-2) at Niles West.
"They picked us up full court and that hurt us a little bit," said Palatine coach Eric Millstone of a 36-15 halftime deficit. "We need to continue working on taking care of the ball. The physical effort has been good for two games."
Palatine senior Matt Rossi (groin) has missed the first 2 games and will be out for Friday's 2:30 p.m. game with Niles North.
Schaumburg update: Schaumburg will now play two games Saturday at Rockford Boylan - at 1:30 p.m. against Farragut and 8 p.m. against the hosts.
Schaumburg was originally scheduled to play Orr, which pulled out of the tourney, on Saturday.