Victory's sweet music for Grant

If basketball games were like TV shows and came with theme songs, the Beatles' lyrics "You say goodbye, and I say hello" could have been piped throughout the gym all night long at Wauconda on Friday.

One team, Wauconda, was playing in one of its first games after saying goodbye to its leading scorer just days earlier.

Senior forward Eric Hartnett came down wrong on a layup and wound up tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

He's gone for the season, and so are his 17 points per game.

Meanwhile, Grant was saying a hearty hello and welcome back to its leading scorer, Jerry Gaylor, who rejoined the team last weekend after missing six games in December with a severely sprained ankle.

No surprise here, but the hellos were easier than the goodbyes and it showed on the court.

Grant built up a 7-point halftime lead and had the mettle to withstand a late Wauconda rally en route to a 51-47 North Suburban Conference Prairie Division victory. It's Grant's first with Gaylor back in the lineup.

The win also snaps a six-game losing streak for the Bulldogs that dated back to Dec. 22. Grant is now 6-9 overall and 3-3 in the Prairie.

Wauconda falls to 5-13 and 0-6 in the Prairie.

"You don't even know how great it is to be back," said Gaylor, whose teammates and coaches were probably thinking the same thing after he torched Wauconda for a game-high 20 points. "I just can't ever sit home with another injury again. Ever. It's too hard. Terrible.

"It got really hard watching my team play and when they were down I couldn't do anything to help them."

Gaylor did plenty to help Grant get off on the right foot against Wauconda. He scored 6 of the Bulldogs' 12 first-quarter points and had 14 points by halftime, mostly on strong moves to the basket.

"It's so nice to have Jerry back because it was hard when he was out," said teammate Shane Richardson, who finished with 13 points, including 6 free throws in the final minute that sealed the game. "He's an intimidating inside presence. He can fly out of the gym. It's nice to have a good big guy in there."

Wauconda used to be able to relate. But now the 6-foot-5 Hartnett is scheduled to have surgery on his knee next week.

"He was the heart and soul of our team, leading us in points and rebounds (7 rpg)," said Wauconda coach Scott Luetschwager, who added that Hartnett was on pace to break Wauconda's single season record for points.

"We've gone back to the drawing board trying to revamp what we do on offense."

One thing Wauconda did was promote sharpshooter Connor Rueb from the sophomore team to the varsity. Rueb made the most of his second-ever varsity game by scoring a career-high 14 points on Grant.

In fact, he almost single-handedly gave Wauconda a chance to pull out a victory when he hit back-to-back three-pointers midway through the fourth quarter.

That cut Grant's lead to 40-38 with 3:07 left.

"It was just that I was feeling good," Rueb said. "When I was younger, I was more of a penetrator and I drove to the basket a lot. But this year, I've worked more on my outside shots and I've been shooting more threes. I was just doing what I could to kind of chip in a little bit."

It was more than a little bit, but just when Rueb had the host Bulldogs one shot from the lead, they turned the ball over on two straight possessions and Grant was able to start building its cushion back up.

"We made a couple of mistakes in letting (Rueb) get some wide-open looks, but we told the guys this is much better than what we've done in the past with closing out games," Grant coach Wayne Bosworth said. "We took a step in the right direction. It's an improvement, and that's what we're looking for at this point."

Wauconda also got double figures (10 points) from Tyler Gick, who missed a game earlier in the week due to an illness.