Grens finally able to grin

No boys basketball team in the area had a tougher start than Elk Grove.

Not only did the Grenadiers lose nine of their first 10 games, they also lost their top returning player, senior Donny Duschinsky, for 14 of the first 15 games because of knee surgery.

But the Grenadiers are one of the toughest teams right now in the Mid-Suburban League with Duschinsky back and a 9-14 record going into tonight's East visit by Buffalo Grove.

Their four-game winning streak is their longest in five years and their only double-digit losing margin in their 8-5 stretch was 73-58 to 22-4 Maine South.

"It's our defense," Elk Grove senior guard Keven Zelaya said of the turnaround. "That's where we've definitely stepped up.

"Offensively we started real slow but now we're playing as a team. Before we were taking the first shot available but now we're working through the offense and getting the best shot we can."

Since the 1-9 start, the offense has gone up from 41.7 to 45.5 points a game and the points allowed has gone down from 52.4 to 46.9.

Duschinsky hurt his knee while scoring 19 points in the opener and didn't come back until a 36-30 loss at Highland Park a month ago. He's been in double figures six times since his return and is averaging 13.3 points a game.

Senior guard Brian Battaglia, who was promoted from the sophomores late in the 2007-08 season, is averaging 10.8 points a game with 40 3-pointers.

Zelaya scored a career-high 23 against Elk Grove and also had 18 against Maine South.

"We're not one-dimensional any more," said Elk Grove coach Anthony Furman. "Guys are coming off the bench and playing well and playing with confidence and toughness and that's important."

Especially with the postseason just a couple of weeks away.

"There's definitely more we can get better at," Zelaya said. "We're happy with our performance but there is still improvement we can have."

Plenty of ways Zach can attack: Fremd junior Zach Monaghan's shooting range seems almost limitless as evidenced by his three-quarter court connection at Schaumburg in late January.

But his game is hardly limited to scoring for the 20-1 MSL West champions.

"He's a great passer, probably the best I've ever played with," said Fremd senior Chris Klimek, the beneficiary of all but one of Monaghan's 12 assists as he scored 25 and 29 points last weekend against Conant and Leyden. "He'll look an entirely different way and I know it's coming. We work on that a lot."

Monaghan said that's been vital between the two Vikings combining for nearly 35 points a game.

"I'll throw it up there and he's there even if it's a bad pass," Monaghan said.

Monaghan got hot the last eight minutes at Leyden to score 15 of his 27 points and hit four of his five threes. He was also a disruptive defensive force with 9 weekend steals.

"I thought he played a complete game for us," Fremd coach Bob Widlowski said after the Leyden win. "I thought he took care of the basketball, made good decisions with it and played pretty good defense for the most part.

"I think people think of Zach as a shooter but Zach is an all-around player who does a lot of things for our team. He's very smart, he reads things well and he makes good decisions."

Good sign for Leyden: Last year Leyden was 10-10 when it was routed at Fremd to start a five-game losing streak en route to a 12-16 finish.

This year the Eagles were 10-10 when they turned a potential rout to Fremd into a 3-point game late in the third quarter before falling 73-58.

But they rebounded to beat Maine West 56-40 Tuesday.

"This team is different," Leyden junior Brandon Stinson said after a 60-41 win over Fenton on Feb. 2. "Last year if things were going bad they went downhill. This year we seem to bounce back."

Avoiding a repeat of last year won't be easy with a road weekend at Downers Grove South and Niles North and junior Division I prospect Abdul Nader followed by a visit by West suburban Gold leader Proviso East.

"Our schedule will be tough at the end and we have to really play well if we want to make a run," said Leyden senior guard Mike Woolf, who is averaging 17.8 points with 52 3s. "The team this year is a lot more balanced. Anybody in the starting lineup on any given night can have a big night."

Particularly Stinson (10.8 ppg, 40 3s), who had 20 against Fremd and 13 at Maine West.

"If he's playing well, it usually means we're playing well as a team," Woolf said.

"He's very versatile and fun to coach," said Leyden coach Bill Heisler. "You can put him at a lot of different spots and he'll do a lot of different things."

Lions in the zone: St. Viator coach Joe Majkowski isn't about to become the purveyor of junk defenses. But he deviated from the usual staple of man-to-man to make extensive use of a 1-3-1 zone in a 60-53 East Suburban Catholic Conference loss to St. Joseph last Wednesday.

"We have a good team and you want to give them a chance to win," said Majkowski, whose team used zones to sweep St. Joseph en route to its only ESCC title in 1997. "They had struggled a couple of times we scouted them against it."

The Lions didn't look as if they had only worked on the 1-3-1 in practice for a day.

"We ran it pretty well," said Viator senior guard Alan Aboona, "and they didn't like it very well."

The Lions also hope the loss to the state-ranked perennial ESCC powerhouse is a sign of better things ahead. They visit Marian Catholic tonight and host Prospect on Tuesday.

"We made steps forward," Aboona said. "That's really what we had to do coming off a bad weekend (81 total points in a loss to Benet and a win at Nazareth)."

A perfect read: The story of the team widely regarded as the best in state history has been chronicled in the book "Thornridge: The Perfect Season in Black and White." No team in 1971-72 came closer than 14 points to the Quinn Buckner-led Falcons who went 33-0 to win the first Class AA state title.

Scott Lynn, who played on downstate Lincoln's state-ranked team that year and is the sports director of KEX radio in Portland, Ore., gives an in-depth look into everything that led to and happened during that season and what happened to those involved afterward.

There is also a local angle since Thornridge won 102-64 at St. Viator that season. At that time, the Viator scoreboards couldn't record triple digits, so when Thornridge hit the century mark the Viator students chanted "scoreboard, scoreboard" to what read 64-00.

For more information on the book go to thornridgebook.com.

More perfection: Lyons is one of the biggest surprises in the state at 20-0 with a balanced, starless team. Can it duplicate the ultimate perfection achieved by its 1953 and 1970 state title teams?

The Lions should get a solid test tonight when they visit York. In an odd coincidence, it's almost 30 years to the day since the Dukes stunned unbeaten Proviso East and future NBA all-star and Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers 72-70 in Elmhurst.

Tip-ins: After last Friday's loss to Fremd, Conant coach Tom McCormack referred to his team's upcoming stretch as "the state tournament before the state tournament" in a pro-like schedule. The Cougars lost to Glenbrook North last Saturday but were snowed out of their trip to Deerfield on Tuesday. They host Barrington tonight and head to St. Joseph on Saturday - Barrington wasn't sure if there was no place like home before last Friday's 57-46 win over Hoffman Estates. Snapping a nine-game home losing streak dating to last year is good news since the Broncos host a Class 4A regional - Postseason pairings for 4A and 3A are expected to be released by the IHSA today at ihsa.org - The two smallest classes came out last week and Christian Liberty got the No. 3 seed in the Westminster Christian 1A regional and opens with No. 6 Alden-Hebron at 8 p.m. on Feb. 23. They split their two meetings in December - The 15th annual City-Suburban Showdown is Feb. 20 at the UIC Pavilion with Waukegan and defending 4A champion Whitney Young as the 8:30 p.m. headliner in a rematch of last year's state title game. Simeon plays DeLaSalle at 6:30 p.m. with Mt. Carmel-St. Patrick at 4:30 p.m.