Scouts stifle Patriots

They did it with defense.

They did it with balance.

That's how the seniors on the Lake Forest boys basketball team got their first-ever varsity win over Stevenson, which was a long time coming.

Some of them have been up on varsity since their sophomore year - and had yet to beat the Patriots.

The drought ended Saturday night with a 57-33 North Suburban Lake Division victory that was significantly aided by the fact that the visiting Patriots connected on just 7 field goals for the entire game and zero in a dismal fourth quarter in which they scored a total of just 6 points - all on free throws.

Lake Forest improves to 7-2 overall and 3-1 in the Lake while Stevenson drops to 3-4 overall and 0-3 in division play.

"Our team defense was amazing to hold them to 33 points," said forward Jonathan Sobinsky, one of Lake Forest's leading defenders. "It's rare to see a very prestigious high school team score under 40 points. But everything just came together for us, everything was working. That was a great feeling."

Meanwhile, points were not nearly as tough to come by for Lake Forest, which proved that it is far more than the "Matt Vogrich Show."

Vogrich, who is one of the best players in Lake County and has already signed with Michigan, scored a game-high 14 points, but had only 8 points heading into the fourth quarter.

His teammates more than carried their own weight throughout the game.

The Scouts put nine players into the scorer's book and five of them had 6 or more points, including Mitch Hopfinger. He was Lake Forest's other double-figure scorer, finishing with 13 points.

"It's not just Matt (Vogrich)," said Stevenson guard Nate Johnson, who tied Jeff Arenson for team-high scoring honors with 8 points. Johnson scored 5 of his 8 points on free throws while Arenson got 6 of his 8 points at the line.

"(Lake Forest) also has really good guys like Hopfinger, (Tommy) Rees and Sobinsky," Johnson added. "They have a really balanced attack. They're tough to guard. But a lot of their points tonight came off of our turnovers and mistakes."

Stevenson had 13 turnovers, which isn't great, but manageable. What hurt more was that the Patriots hit just 7-of-32 shots for the game, an anemic 21.9 percent.

"The last three or four games in conference, we just can't put the ball in the basket," Johnson said. "For whatever reason, our shots aren't falling. It's really frustrating. You've got to score to win and we're not executing anything."

Stevenson was down only 26-17 at halftime but the deficit only kept growing - to 14 points at the end of the third quarter and 19 points a few minutes into the fourth.

It didn't help that the Patriots made just 1 field goal in the entire second half - a 3-pointer by Jeff Leavitt early in the third quarter - and took only 3 shots over the entire fourth quarter.

"Our defense was unbelievable," Lake Forest coach Phil LaScala said. "(Stevenson is ) a strong post-up team and our perimeter guys did an unbelievable job of preventing passes from getting into the post.

"We rebounded well, too and that helps. We just have a lot of good guys with long arms and they work really hard."