Lake Zurich lives it up on the road

Sometimes, home court advantage isn’t always such an advantage.

Just ask the Lake Zurich girls basketball team. The Bears haven’t always played their best basketball at home this season.

However, a nice tradeoff has been that they’re finding life on the road to be quite comfortable, which makes their next game an interesting proposition.

With a 5-0 mark in North Suburban Conference Lake Division road games compared to a 1-4 record at home, Lake Zurich is feeling optimistic about tonight’s big showdown against Stevenson. The Patriots may be sitting in first place in the Lake Division standings, but the Bears get to hit the road to play them. And as strange and as unusual as it sounds, that’s where they’re at their best.

“I’m not sure in my 17 years I’ve ever seen that before,” Lake Zurich coach Chris Bennett said of his team’s traditionally backwards success levels for home versus road games. “I’m really not sure what it is, other than maybe we’re looser on the road, maybe we play a little more free on the road.”

Lake Zurich has gotten road wins against some of the best teams in the area, including Libertyville, Warren and Zion-Benton.

“It’s funny because as a coach, you sit down at the beginning of the season and try to figure out which games you’ll probably win, which games you need to win and you always figure that you’ve got to win all of your home games and half of your road games to be in the chase (for a conference title),” Bennett said. “With us, it’s been backwards this season.”

And yet somehow, the Bears are exactly right side up.

They boast a 17-9 record and are playing some of their best basketball of the season right now. They’ve won five of their last six games, including Saturday’s victory over state-ranked Fenwick.

“We feel like we are starting to play well at the right time of the year,” said Bennett, who is hoping his team will be able to keep its current hot streak going long enough to eventually include some wins at home.

After all, the Bears will be playing some very important games at home soon. They are hosting a regional.

“Maybe this wasn’t the best year to tell the IHSA that we wanted to host a regional,” Bennett said.

Balanced approach

Besides finding an unexpected comfort in road games this season, Lake Zurich has also taken comfort in each other.

The Bears rely on the contributions of many, rather than just a few.

They have won with consistent balance this season. Five players (senior guards Dori Darras, Maisie Cox, Katherine Anderson and Cathryne Spear and senior forward Renee Wojcik) all average between 7 and 9 points per game. And even leading scorer Stephanie Schmid, a senior guard who comes off the bench, is right in that range at 11 points per game.

“That’s who we are. It’s a great balance,” Lake Zurich coach Chris Bennett said. “We’ve had six different kids score in double figures this season. We’ve had four different kids score more than 18 points in a game. It’s been nice because we get a lot of players involved.”

Not yet

Since Tom Dineen took over as head coach at Stevenson three years ago, the losses have been adding up for Lake Zurich.

The Bears are out to stop the bleeding tonight in their North Suburban Lake Division showdown at Stevenson.

“We are still 0-for the Dineen era,” Lake Zurich coach Chris Bennett said. “We’re 0-8 against Stevenson since he took over.

“It’s still be a fun game for us because our kids know their kids well and Stevenson is a rival school for us, and it’s always fun to coach against such good coach like Tom. But we’d like to get one of these against them.”

Saying goodbye

Four years ago, it was tough for Grayslake North coach Jim Sarver to say goodbye to his seniors.

They were special, the first seniors to graduate from the brand new school.

Now, this current group of seniors, which includes guards Sara Steinhoff and Allie Ceglarek, forwards Katie McGrath and Brooke Sauer and center Christina Freese, presents an even tougher challenge for Sarver.

This group helped take the Knights from fledgling to fantastic. Grayslake North, which will say goodbye to the seniors during Senior Night festivities tonight against visiting Waukegan, is enjoying its best season in school history.

The Knights already have 16 wins, which broke the old record of 12 wins, and they recently earned a No. 4 seed in their regional, their highest IHSA tournament seed ever.

“These five seniors have been wonderful for our program and have showed incredible ‘stick-to-it-ness,’ if that’s a word,” laughed Sarver, who has worked with McGrath, Sauer and Steinhoff on varsity for three years. “They’ve all gone through the pains of a new school but they have been great leaders and role models and they have helped us really improve our program.”

Not only has this current group of seniors left their mark with their own play, they’ve helped cultivate better play in the program at a grassroots levels. They’ve worked with younger girls one-on-one, encouraging them, helping them with their games.

“They’ve wanted to see the program continue to improve on all levels, so they really put a lot of time in and they are such role models for our younger girls. Our younger girls all look up to them. I think they’re a big reason we’ve seen such improvement in our program at all levels, to the point where we’re a winning program now. They’ve been great saleswomen for Grayslake North girls basketball.”

Join the club

With 18 points in a 46-31 victory over Deerfield Monday night, Grayslake Central senior guard Skyler Jessop hit a major milestone in her career.

She scored her 1,000th career point. She hit all 5 of her free throws and also knocked down a 3-pointer on her big night.

The Rams also got 11 points from senior forward Beth Arnold and 9 points from sophomore center Morgan Dahlstrom while moving to 20-4 on the season.

Not quite

Despite a balanced attack that included points from seven players, Carmel just missed notching a win against Providence on Monday night, falling 44-42.

The Corsairs were led by senior forward Sarah McHugh with 12 points while sophomore guards Leah Lach and Cassidy Kloss added 9 and 8 points, respectively.