Knights get back to their winning ways

So far, it's been a season of streaks for the Grayslake North boys basketball team.

The Knights stormed out of the gates with a four-game winning streak to post their best start in school history. But the hype was quickly tempered when that streak was broken and a new one began.

Grayslake North then lost its next four games.

Now, that streak is over, and perhaps a new one is about to begin.

The Knights got back on the plus side Tuesday afternoon at the Grant Holiday Tournament by getting a decisive 60-48 victory over Northtown Academy, which made the final margin more agreeable by scoring a flurry of points in garbage time.

When Grayslake North coach Todd Grunloh began to pull his starters, his team had a 25-point lead.

"We had a little bit of trouble keeping our heads up (during the four-game losing streak)," said Grayslake North senior forward Rollin Idlas, who scored 11 points to tie guard Brandon Schroth for team-high scoring honors. "It feels good to get this win and get back on track. It's good that we snapped that losing streak."

Grayslake North improves to 5-4 overall while Northtown Academy, a small charter school on the far north side of Chicago, drops to 4-5.

"It's nice to get back to our winning ways," Grunloh said. "Hopefully, this will get us back some of our momentum. We just need to be more consistent over 32 minutes like we were over Thanksgiving when we were winning all those games.

"We've had a hard time with that lately, and we were a little sloppy today. But what we told the kids is that we were still able to win and we need to build on that."

Northtown hung in there with Grayslake North early on, taking a 1-point deficit (16-15) into the second quarter. But that's when the Knights kicked it up a notch. Using a nine-player rotation, they turned their depth into a weapon and outscored a short-handed Northtown team 18-4 in the quarter. The Knights took a 34-19 lead into the locker room at the break. Their lead would never fall below 13 points after that - until the waning seconds, that is.

"The weather didn't help us out at all," Northtown coach Darren Bell said of the mini-blizzard that hit the Chicago area in the afternoon. "We have kids coming from all over the city and we had a couple of guys who couldn't make it to the bus. We usually suit 13 guys and we had 8 today. We also had an hour-and-a-half bus ride up here. So that wasn't that much fun.

"But we actually had a better effort today than yesterday. Grayslake North was just tough. They were really well disciplined. They passed the ball really well and they're huge. They've also got a lot of depth. They suited 16 guys and kept sending them at us in waves. When they come that big and that fast, it's tough."

Northtown was led in scoring by Isaiah Vargas, who had 12 points. Jeff Davis chipped in with 11 points.

Meanwhile, Grant Henricksen also finished in double-figures for Grayslake North. He had 10 points.