Boys basketball: Leyden stays hot, runs past Addison Trail
Early in the first quarter at Addison Trail, from his spot in front of the Leyden bench, Eagles coach Tyler Gilliam kept exhorting his team to “go quick.”
“That’s a big point of emphasis for us, playing with pace and pushing the ball down the court,” said Gilliam. “Just as quick as we can, making sure we’re in rhythm.
“We’ve been a little stagnant the last couple of games, and we’re at our best when we’re pushing the ball up the court and making good decisions.”
And right from the get-go Tuesday, the Leyden players responded.
The Eagles took a 12-point lead into halftime, then scored the first 19 points of the third quarter to run away with a 70-44 West Suburban Gold win over the Blazers.
Senior guard Ernesto Sanchez scored a game-high 19 points, sophomore Robert Darling scored 14 and senior Mohamed El-Hindi pitched in with 12 points, 10 of those coming in the first half.
Kevin Sanchez was also in double figures for the Eagles with 10 points.
“Our intensity was incredibly high in this game,” said El-Hindi. “We push the ball when we can, grab the defensive rebounds and just go. And we were playing hard on defense.”
The Eagles were strong on the boards as well. They outrebounded Addison Trail 30-18 and according to El-Hindi, it all comes from focusing on the glass in practice.
“Every day,” said the senior, “we’re boxing out, just doing a ton of box-out drills.”
Vincent Blonda led the Blazers with 14 points, while Manuel Roque, Marcello Saraceno, and Alexander Burbank each scored 7.
“We didn’t have enough effort overall (tonight),” said Burbank. “Not enough rebounding, and too many turnovers.”
“We need to have better transitions as a team,” Burbank added. “Sometimes, when we sub, other teams go on a run.”
Leyden took a 21-13 lead early in the second quarter, but three consecutive buckets from Blonda saw Addison Trail cut the deficit to 21-19.
The Eagles responded, and a layup with under a minute remaining in the stanza from Ernesto Sanchez, then a 3 at the halftime buzzer by Darling, increased the Eagles advantage to 38-26 at the break.
Then in the third quarter, Leyden broke the contest open by going on a 19-0 run.
Senior Julian Martinez started the barrage with a quick steal and feed to Ernesto Sanchez for a layup, and when Sanchez sank another two-pointer with a minute left in the third, the score was 57-26.
To their credit, Addison Trail didn’t give in in the final period. They outscored Leyden 15-10 in the fourth.
Roque had 6 rebounds for the Blazers, while on the visitors side, Kevin Sanchez and Martinez each had a game-high 7 boards.
With the win, Leyden improved to 14-6, 5-1 in conference. Addison Trail fell to 7-10, 1-3.
The Eagles lost their first three games of the season, but have been on a roll since then with 14 wins and just three losses.
"The kids have been working their butts off," said Gilliam, "and we've made a nice run. We have a couple of sophomores right now and it took them a few games to get going and figure it out, but they've blended well with our juniors and seniors. We're still inconsistent some nights defensively but when we're getting out and running, we're playing well."