Grant takes a step backward

The difference wasn’t just 42 points.

The difference was also effort.

On Friday night, the Grant boys basketball team poured in 80 points in a 100-80 loss to Class 3A powerhouse North Chicago in a mostly nip-and-tuck game. The margin was just 5 points until North Chicago pulled away in the final four minutes.

Roughly 24 hours later on Saturday night, the same Grant Bulldogs struggled to find the basket.

They managed to score 42 fewer points than they did against North Chicago in a 58-38 nonconference loss to visiting Highland Park.

And unlike the North Chicago game, the Bulldogs weren’t able to keep it close in the second half. Highland Park was up by 12 points at halftime and had a 17-point lead just a few minutes into the third quarter.

Talk about a tale of two games.

“We played North Chicago tough. We had a great team effort (Friday night) against one of the best teams in the state. Tonight, there were no positives,” Grant coach Wayne Bosworth said. “We just didn’t come to play tonight. It was a completely different team that showed up. We were flat. We did play together as a team. We had no intensity from top to bottom. We weren’t ready to play at all. It was a poor, poor team effort.”

It also didn’t help that Highland Park found a way to take Grant (3-3) completely out of its game.

The Giants (4-2) dropped back into a zone defense that helped to slow Grant’s high-octane offense, which was on full display the night before against North Chicago.

“We’re not a team that scores 80 points on a regular basis. It was our plan to come in and keep the game in the 40s which is where we’re more comfortable playing,” Highland Park coach Paul Harris said. “We’re giving up a little bit of size and quickness so we try to play a tight-packed zone to help us both on the glass and in stopping their penetration. We wanted to make them shoot a lot of contested jumpshots.”

Speaking of contested jumpshots, the Giants hit some. And they also hit plenty that weren’t nearly as contested as Bosworth would have liked.

Highland Park was particularly effective from 3-point range, draining 10 overall. Senior guards Jake Norcia (game-high 27 points) and Danny Dlugie (12 points) combined to hit 9 of the long-range bombers, 5 and 4 respectively.

“Guys got me the ball in the right place. It was a total team effort tonight. I can’t do this without them. They help me get open shots,” said Norcia, who was just one off his season-high for 3-pointers. He canned 6 three-pointers over Thanksgiving against Conant.

“We ‘re a little smaller than everyone we play,” Norcia continued. “But we have strengths in other places like shooting the 3 and playing defense. We held a team that scored 80 points last night to 38 tonight. A lot of credit has to go to our guys for that.”

Senior guard Allen Lewis was the only Grant player to reach double-figures. He had 11 points, including 1 three-pointer. Jared Helmich had 8 points and Thomas Blanchette and Ilya Kadushin each finished with 7 points for the Bulldogs.

“A lot of it was team effort tonight,” said Lewis, who poured in a career-high 26 points against North Chicago on Friday. “Last night (against North Chicago), we played like we knew it was a big game. Tonight, we just fell apart a bit.

“It was such a tempo change. North Chicago was up and down, up and down. Highland Park kind of dictated a different tempo. We like getting up and down. We have a team full of athletes and Highland Park took us out of our tempo. We could never get in the flow of things.”