It's all good for Spartans

St. Francis' Ryan Coyle has got to be a coach's dream.

"I don't keep track of my points," said the 6-foot-4 freshman forward. "I don't care how many I score. I just care about how the team does."

All was well in the Spartans' universe Saturday because his team won and Coyle led it with 14 points.

Scoring 11 points, 6-3 Joe Pfeiffer joined Coyle as a nagging thorn to Timothy Christian's interior defense in St. Francis' 51-32 win at the Glenbard West Holiday Classic.

Timothy Christian (6-3) is a solid, athletic club, and to hold the Trojans to 32 points on 12-of-42 shooting from the floor said something about the Spartans' man-to-man defense, which forced 10 of 13 turnovers in the second half.

"This might be very typical of how we're going to play," said St. Francis coach Shawn Healy. "We're going to do it on the defensive side of the ball, then we're going to kind of grind it out on the offensive side. We're not going to put up scores in the 70s and 80s."

Four would have sufficed as Healy watched Timothy Christian take a quick 9-2 lead. Starting with team-high scorer Robert White's 3 right out of the box, four Trojans scored in the first 2:17 and center Peter Tameling stole two passes as the "1" in Trojans coach Jack LeGrand's 2-1-2 zone defense.

"I challenged their effort," Healy said. "I challenged their pride."

St. Francis (4-4) accepted the challenge with an 8-0 run. After 10-point scorer Dave Palash canned a free throw to give the Spartans a 19-18 lead at 2:36 of the second quarter St. Francis never trailed again.

"The game started off well," LeGrand said. "Then we just got really complacent. Coach Healy and St. Francis did a good job playing really solid defense, but our execution was very poor today."

Coyle closed the third quarter scoring St. Francis' last 9 points for a 35-28 lead. The Spartans let it rip with a 16-4 edge in the fourth quarter while holding Timothy to 2-of-10 shooting in the quarter.

"I think what we do best - running up and scoring quick - we stopped," said Tameling, who had 8 points and 7 rebounds. "We were content with setting up a slow offense, which isn't our game."