Crystal Lake South overcomes cold shooting

Normally, if Crystal Lake South leading scorer Zach Geske were to miss his first 10 shots of a game like he did Saturday night at Cary-Grove, his team would be in trouble.

In this case Geske and the rest of coach Matt LePage's Gators compensated for an overall lack of shooting accuracy by dominating other aspects of the game to win 56-43 in Fox Valley Conference Valley Division action.

CL South (5-3, 2-0) shot 17 of 50 from the field (34 percent) and 2 of 16 from 3-point range, but the Gators made up for it by winning the rebounding battle 37-27 and the turnover battle 14-7.

Of CL South's 37 rebounds, 16 were offensive.

"Our team's got some height," said 6-foot-9 senior Josh Friesen, who finished with 14 points and 9 boards. "I think we really attacked the glass hard tonight and that really helped us. Even when our shots weren't falling we were still getting rebounds."

Cary-Grove (2-5, 0-2) rallied from a 15-8 deficit after a quarter to tie the game at 15, but Geske's first field goal, a short jump shot with 4:12 left in the second quarter, sparked CL South's 8-0 run to end the half.

Geske, who scored 30 points in a loss to South Elgin on Tuesday, looked more like himself in the third quarter when he sank 4 of 6 attempts for 9 points. His tip-in just before the third-quarter buzzer staked CL South to a 37-25 lead.

"I was just trying to stay positive, obviously, after missing 10," Geske said. "I just changed my game up a little bit, started going inside more. I adjusted."

The Trojans pulled within 47-40 on a 3-pointer by leading scorer Zach Beaugureau (12 points) with 2:30 remaining, but they couldn't overcome a 16-of-47 shooting performance (34 percent) in addition to rebounding and turnover deficits.

"We have to box out," Cary-Grove coach Ralph Schuetzle said. "We have to get a body on somebody, we have to fight, we have to scrap. We did a better job in the second half. Offensively, early on we just took too many bad shots. Then we had a couple where good shooters got open looks and they just didn't fall."

Geske scored 17 of his game-high 23 points in the second half. Sophomore Tyler Haskin (6-4) finished with 6 points and 8 rebounds and 5-10 senior Tyler Carlson contributed 7 points and 5 rebounds for the Gators.

Danny Schmidt scored 8 points and hauled down 7 rebounds for the Trojans before he fouled out with 2:59 left in the game.