Grayslake North can't catch Harlem

Grayslake North's boys basketball team found itself in an unfamiliar position in familiar territory Saturday night.

Playing in the championship game of the Johnsburg/Richmond-Burton Thanksgiving tournament for the third year in a row, the Knights spotted Harlem an early lead and never recovered en route to a 51-39 loss at Johnsburg.

Mind you, in its three weekday games at Richmond-Burton, Grayslake North stormed out of the locker room clicking on all cylinders and raced to early leads.

"We got off to three greats starts in every one of the three games," Knights coach Todd Grunloh said. "What could have probably helped (against Harlem) was if we would have made a shot. Not that we had greats shots early on, but if you make a shot you kind of ease the tensions."

Instead, Harlem led 8-0 when Grunloh burned a timeout midway through the opening quarter.

Teddy Ludwick hit two 3-pointers and Mark Hall drained another, but the Knights trailed 12-9 after a quarter and then watched Harlem start the second with a 10-0 run.

Grayslake North, which won the tourney two years ago before Johnsburg denied the Knights a repeat title last year, placed Ludwick and fellow guard A.J. Fish on the all-tournament team, with Ludwick being named co-MVP along with Johnsburg guard Mike Dombrowski.

Ludwick scored a game-high 13 points against Harlem (4-0), which got 12 points apiece from all-tourney picks Alex Ghinazzi and Tre Wagner.

Grayslake North finished 3-1.

"It definitely would feel better if we had the (championship) trophy, but we're still taking home some hardware (for winning the Richmond-Burton pool), which we're happy about," Ludwick said. "A lot of our hard work that we put in the off-season and in the summer showed. This is the first time this group of guys is playing together. We're still trying to blend."

The Knights shot just 5 of 24 from the floor in the first half and trailed 26-13. They had trouble penetrating Harlem's zone and, in fact, didn't register a two-point field goal until 6-foot-6 Ben Guhl put back his own miss with 3:23 left before halftime.

"We were getting open looks," Ludwick said. "We just weren't finishing. We got to knock down those shots."

The Knights finally awoke in the third quarter, attacking the middle and getting 3-pointers from Patrick Delamar, Ludwick and Hall. Hall (8 points) closed the quarter with a runner and 3-pointer to pull Grayslake North within 37-32.

The Knights outscored the Huskies 19-11 in the third.

"But I feel like at that point, our kids were just gassed," Grunloh said. "I think it was pretty difficult from there."

Harlem scored the first 6 points of the fourth to go up 11. Fish ended that run with a drive, but the sophomore fouled out shortly afterward, and the Huskies continued to extend their cushion.

"At the beginning they kind of put us on our heels a little bit, and it was tough to recover from that point," Grunloh said. "Overall, I thought they worked a lot harder than we did."