Lake Zurich takes out Barrington
The boys basketball playoffs couldn’t have come soon enough for Barrington and Lake Zurich, as the Broncos ended the regular season with consecutive losses and Bears having lost five straight.
It seemed as if Lake Zurich’s struggles would continue Tuesday in the Zion-Benton regional semifinal after falling behind by double digits late in the first half, but a second-half surge sent the Bears to Friday’s regional title game against Mundelein with a 54-46 upset victory.
Lake Zurich coach Billy Pitcher called for time with just over three minutes to go in the first half, hoping to stem the tide of a 13-2 Barrington run that had pushed its lead from 16-15 to 29-17.
In the short break, Bears senior Mirko Grcic decided this would not be a repeat of last year, when Lake Zurich (15-15) fell in a regional first round game. The 6-foot-6 guard scored 6 points and the Bears locked down defensively, going into the half with some momentum.
“I don’t like to call timeouts like that, but in a regional, OK, let’s calm our guys down and talk about it,” Pitcher said. “And we finished the half on a 6-2 run and cut it to (31-23).”
The Bears carried that confidence out of the break with an 11-2 run of their own, keyed by two Ryan Roach 3-pointers.
Lake Zurich took a 39-37 lead into the fourth quarter and stretched it to 7 on a driving Grcic basket and another 3 from Roach (11 points).
Grcic finished with a double-double with game highs in points (20) and rebounds (10). He scored 11 points in the second half.
“He’s so versatile and so strong,” Pitcher said of Grcic. “I think he had a little chip on his shoulder in this game. (John) Schneider is Division I, (Brad) Zaumseil has been offered Division I and he’s got D-3’s and D-2’s after him. He wanted — not to force things — but show that hey, he’s just as good as those guys. He’s a guy who can take over like that because he can do so many different things.”
Then there was Roach, who came into the game shooting 54 percent from behind the arc (20-for-37) and hit all three of his long range attempts.
“He’s by far our best shooter,” Grcic said. “I’m confident when he shoots the ball, he’s going to make it half the time.”
The Bears managed to maintain a three-possession margin for the rest of the game after Roach’s 3 put them up 44-37, breaking the Broncos (18-11) press on offense and holding them to just 15 second half points.
“The second half was certainly not one of our best,” Broncos coach Bryan Tucker said. “We left a lot of points at the free throw line (with eight misses). It was a physical game and I thought there were some questionable whistles, but we’ve got to play through that. They converted and we didn’t. They executed, and we didn’t.”