Glenbard East overcomes shooting woes

Glenbard East's boys basketball team struggled with its shooting for one of the few times this season.

The talented Rams still found a way to win.

Notching its seventh straight victory and sweeping both DuPage Valley Conference weekend games on the road, Glenbard East held off Naperville North 64-52 on Saturday.

"We just had to keep shooting and not get frustrated," said Rams junior Johnny Hill, who led all scorers with 24 points and grabbed 9 rebounds. "The big thing was staying focused. Just stand as one and play through it."

Naperville North (10-4, 2-3) held Glenbard East (13-1, 5-0) to 17 points in the middle quarters on 5-of-26 shooting from the field. The Huskies trailed by as many as 10 points in the first half before taking a 39-27 lead on Matt LaCosse's bucket late in the third quarter.

Glenbard East, however, went ahead 42-40 at the end of the quarter on Jack Merrithey's 3-pointer. The Rams then started the fourth quarter with Hill's 3-pointer and Lee Skinner's tipped basket to push the advantage to 47-40.

Naperville North, which lost to Naperville Central on Friday, never came closer than 5 points away the rest of the game.

"It was just one of those weekends that didn't work out," said Huskies senior Matt Hasse, who led his team with 20 points. "We turned the ball over a lot this weekend and made some mistakes. We need to learn how to finish games and play four quarters."

Steve Kinney's steal and layup boosted Glenbard East's lead to 29-19 midway through the second quarter. Naperville North took over for the next several minutes, scoring 14 of the next 17 points and claiming a 33-32 advantage early in the third quarter on Chris McGee's basket.

The teams stayed close until Glenbard East's decisive run that began at the end of the third quarter.

"A little disappointing but our kids did compete very hard today," said Huskies coach Jeff Powers. "We had them on their heels, we've just got to learn how to grow up and understand that it takes more than just playing hard."

Merrithey scored 15 points for the Rams, while Zach Miller and Lee Skinner each had 9 points. McGee tallied 11 points for Naperville North.

"We knew this was going to happen at some point, that we were going to come out and not shoot the ball as well as we're capable of," said Rams coach Scott Miller. "I was proud of the way the guys kept plugging along."