Boys basketball: Fremd dominates the boards in MSL win over Conant
A starting five of players between 6-feet-4 and 6-6 gives Fremd the makings of a solid glass-cleaning crew.
And the Vikings didn’t mess around with misses at either end of the floor in a tidy 70-47 Mid-Suburban West boys basketball victory over Conant on Friday night in Palatine.
“It all starts with our drills in practice and we all compete and go hard in practice,” said 6-5 junior Tommy Moffett after the Vikings had a 33-11 rebounding advantage and scored 16 points off their own missed shots.
“We’ve really worked hard on rebounding, crashing the glass and really blocking out,” said 6-4 senior Ryan Brown,” so we could push the ball in transition like tonight.”
The biggest beneficiaries for Fremd (6-1, 2-0) were 6-6 junior Jordan Wiliams (21 points on 9-for-12 shooting, 7 rebounds) and 6-4 senior Samuel Hirsch (17 points on 7-for-11 with three 3-pointers). The dirty work was a team effort with 6-5 junior Rafael Pinto (12 points, 6 rebounds), Moffett (10 points, 8 rebounds) and Brown (6 points, 8 rebounds).
“We hope so with the length we have,” Fremd coach Mike Brown said of the potential to consistently control the boards. “We have to box out and go get the ball and we did a pretty good job of that tonight.”
Right from the start even though the misses for the Vikings were infrequent as they shot 62.5% from the field (30-for-48). Moffett got a 3-point play and Pinto a basket on the offensive glass as they scored the first 7 points and never trailed the Cougars (5-3, 1-1).
Moffett also grabbed a miss to start the second half and fired one of his 3 assists to Hirsch for a 3 and a 40-23 lead. And naturally Moffett got into double figures on an offensive rebound to help Fremd open its biggest lead at 70-43.
“It gives your team a lot of confidence early in the game and it really breaks a team down when you score to start the game with an ‘and-one,’” Moffett said.
“They are a disciplined, well-organized, tough team and they do everything the right way,” said Conant coach Greg Grana. “You can’t make mistakes against them and that’s a credit to their players and coaches. They’re definitely the most physical team we’ve played so far.”
Conant senior Nate Hahn had 17 points on 8-for-17 shooting and 6-7 Bradley Biedke had 13 points on 5-for-11. But the rest of the team was just 6-for-20 against Fremd’s man-to-man defense.
And Fremd never relaxed as it maintained a double-digit lead after Moffett’s drive made it 23-13 with 22 seconds left in the first quarter. Junior sixth man Chase Nelson chipped in 4 points and 2 assists.
“We’ve gotten tougher overall as a team,” Ryan Brown said.
“The guys really played hard and had a really good team game,” Mike Brown said. “The passing was good and overall we took good shots out there. Rebounding has been a thing we’ve worked on and it showed itself tonight.”