Vernon Hills prevails at Antioch

Playing good basketball would have been too easy for Vernon Hills, a team that so far tends to do things the hard way. Instead, for the second straight game the Cougars needed to grind it out for a victory.

Vernon Hills spoiled Antioch's home opener 48-42 in a North Suburban Prairie game Friday.

"It wasn't too pretty and we're not going to send these games to the basketball Hall of Fame, by no means," said Vernon Hills coach Matt McCarty, whose team barely got past Carmel on Tuesday but improved to 5-1 overall. "It may tend to look ugly when we win. But doing it on the road in front of a good crowd, we'll take it."

The Cougars' DaVaris Daniels was held to 4 points over the first three quarters, but he later came alive, scoring 7 of his team-high 11 points in the final quarter.

"Antioch had a full denial on me from the beginning," said Daniels who also pulled down 11 rebounds. "Fourth quarter, I was attacking more, trying to get rebounds and putbacks. It's a little under the average, but I'll take it for a win."

Chris Argianas added 10 and Chris Morgan chipped in 7 for the Cougars.

Antioch (1-3, 0-1) caused so many problems that Vernon Hills had numerous starters in foul trouble. The Cougars' bench needed to step up in the early part of the fourth quarter. Brian Berzanski (4 points and 8 rebounds), freshman Stephen Curry (6 points) and Tyler Zuntiga hit a couple of free three throws as all contributed.

"It may not stand out in the box score, but they did the little things that would stand out off the bench," McCarty said. "Antioch was really physical and a lot of the pressure was above the free throw line. We had troubles getting around them. Antioch played a hard-nosed man-to-man defense."

The Sequoits trailed 19-7 at the half and relied mostly on their defense. Antioch trailed 30-20 going into the final quarter but managed to creep within 5 points in the final seconds.

"That's our thing for this year, playing smart defense," said Antioch coach Michael Skinner. "We didn't want Daniels or Morgan to get 20 or 30 apiece. We wanted other players to beat us.

"This game I'll take the defense, but we'll scrap the offense. We went to playing robot ball from rec ball and need to be somewhere in between. We did have some execution toward the end but we need to be smoother."

Sequoits' Kyle Melton injured an ankle a couple minutes in, sat out for four minutes and came back to score a game-high 12 points. Melton made 8 straight free throws in the final quarter and finished 10-for-10.