New wrinkle helps York stun Glenbard West

The plan laid out by York coach Tom Kleinschmidt was simple and the Dukes followed it to perfection and it led to a landmark win.

York’s ability to slow the pace and control speed of play along with a career-high 31 points from junior guard David Cohn added up to a 53-44 victory against Glenbard West on Friday night in West Suburban Conference Silver action in Elmhurst.

“They have players all over the place and we stepped up and met the challenge,” Kleinschmidt said. “We did what we wanted to do. We put in a new zone and the kids did a great job executing. We slowed the ball. We held them to one shot and we hit big shots.”

The Dukes (8-6, 2-2) primarily sat in a 2-1-2 zone defense while sprinkling in a little 2-3 zone along the way.

The Hilltoppers (10-2, 2-1), who once again, enjoyed a significant height advantage; looked lost offensively as most Glenbard West possessions were one shot and done or resulted in a turnover as the Hilltoppers finished with 16.

“We’ve seen a lot of zone and we’ve done a nice job of attacking zone, but we didn’t do a good job of attacking it tonight,” Hilltoppers coach Tim Hoder said. “We were passive. We didn’t attack it and we didn’t use our interior presence at all.”

Meanwhile, Cohn had the hot hand for York and he tallied 18 of the Dukes’ 25 first-half points to help the hosts to a 25-21 halftime lead.

Glenbard West, coming off its first loss of the season to Bolingbrook earlier this week, pulled ahead and led 33-32 going into the final quarter.

York went on a 16-5 run that spanned the first 6 minutes, 30 seconds of the fourth quarter, during which time the Hilltoppers went 0 of 5 from the field with 7 turnovers.

Cohn received some help from teammates Matt DiFrancesca and Jake Rzeszutko who contributed most of their scoring in the fourth quarter.

“My shot was falling early, which was great, but my teammates made big shots as we expect them to do,” said Cohn, whose previous best was 29 points scored last season. “We stuck to our plan and that is exactly we wanted to do — keep them below 60. I can’t say enough about how coach got us ready.”

The Dukes were diligent and patient offensively as they worked their motion offense sometimes passing the ball more than 10 times in a single possession while burning the clock.

“It is tough playing at a slower pace, but we’ve been successful and if that’s what it takes to win games we’ll do it,” Cohn said.

Jeff Levesque and Michael Mache each had 13 points to lead the Hilltoppers.