Demirov scores 33, Crystal Lake South blows out Barrington
Crystal Lake South boys basketball coach Matt LePage said it would take his team’s best effort of the season to beat Barrington in their second-round Tuesday in the Jacobs’ Hinkle Holiday Classic.
Mission accomplished.
The Gators jumped ahead early and defensively clamped down on Barrington in the second half on their way to a 72-47 victory at the Eagles’ Nest.
South (13-1) has won 10 consecutive games and is in the semifinals for the second straight year. The third-seeded Gators take on No. 2 Lake Zurich (11-3) at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the first semifinal.
Junior guard AJ Demirov hit four 3-pointers and tossed in 33 points to lead the Gators, who shot 52.7% from the field (29 of 55).
“I think it was our best game, offensively for sure,” LePage said. “AJ’s ability to break it down and get everybody else going is a big part of it too. Not just his scoring. He’s doing a great job.
“We have to continue to do it to beat some good teams the rest of the way.”
Barrington (8-3) scored the game’s first basket on Oliver Gray’s 10-foot jumper from the right baseline, but South answered with nine consecutive points and several steals off its 1-3-1 zone defense to jump ahead for good.
“Barrington has a good team, they have a good rep,” said Gators forward James Carlson, who scored 12 points. “We came out strong, we hit shots, AJ was feeding us, everything was just kind of going.”
The Broncos got back into the game in the second quarter with 10 of 17 shooting and cut the lead to 35-30 at halftime on Nick Peipert’s 3 at the buzzer.
Nick Tepas scored inside to start the second half and cut the lead to 35-32, but the Gators went on a 16-0 run.
“At halftime we talked about we needed to finish this game,” Demirov said. “We knew we could get up big; we just needed to keep playing hard and keep playing tough. We just had to finish.”
Barrington committed only three turnovers in the quarter, but hit 3 of 10 shots, with two of those makes coming on 3s in the last minute of the quarter.
“We lost our ball pressure in the first half a little bit,” LePage said. “Once we started pressuring better in the third quarter, now we can get deflections and steals back for layups. Once we pressured better and rebounded, then we could get in transition and let AJ be AJ.”
LePage lauded the efforts of 6-foot-8 Christian Rohde for his deflections and rebounding.
“They started making tough shots, we had some empty possessions, and that just fueled them,” Broncos coach Bryan Tucker said. “They’re really talented. They’re well-coached. All their players are skilled. They just took it to us.”
Tony Santarelli hit 4 of 5 shots, three of which were 3s, in the second half for the Gators and finished with 11 points.
“Our defense, we put some ball pressure on them and got some steals, and AJ started doing his thing,” Carlson said. “We didn’t have a lot of good rebounds in the first half, but we crashed the boards a little better in the second.”
Demirov finished 13 of 26 from the field for his 33 points.
Gray led Barrington with 19 points and three 3s. Peipert added 14.