Grayslake North makes first regional final
It sounds impressive that Grayslake North more than quadrupled its first-half point total during the second half of Wednesday’s Class 3A Antioch regional semifinal game against Northside Prep.
What ruins it, though, is that the Knights had just 10 points at halftime. That’s not so impressive.
Grayslake North played perhaps its ugliest half of basketball this season. And yet, somehow, the Knights are now sitting pretty, poised for their first regional championship game in school history after getting a 41-25 victory over Northside.
“That’s definitely not the way we wanted to come out,” Grayslake North junior guard AJ Fish said of his team’s lackluster first half. “We couldn’t really control the ball. We had a bunch of bad turnovers and (Northside Prep) played really good defense. But we finally got it going, and a win is a win.”
For Grayslake North, it wasn’t just any win. It was an historic one. The Knights have never before advanced this far in the state tournament.
On Friday, the Knights will try to keep the postseason run rolling as they take on crosstown rival Grayslake Central in the regional championship at Antioch. Tip-off is at 7:30 p.m. and the gym is expected to be hopping as the sister schools look to decide their season series in dramatic fashion. In Fox Valley Conference action this year, Grayslake North and Grayslake Central split their two games, each winning at home.
“It will be a great game. The atmosphere will be awesome,” said Fish, who was the only player in the regional semifinal to reach double-figures with 11 points. “In the game we won (against Grayslake Central), we came out with a lot of energy. It was our energy that did it.”
The Knights (19-8) looked fairly unenergetic early on against Northside Prep. They went 3-for-14 from the field over the first half and coughed the ball up 11 times.
The saving grace for Grayslake North was that Northside (16-11) wasn’t capitalizing all that often. The Mustangs had their own shooting woes and turnover problems, and they took just a 13-10 lead into the locker room at the break.
“I’m trying to think of the last time we had just 10 points at halftime. I mean, that had to be five years ago,” Grayslake North coach Todd Grunloh said. “I think we just looked really tight. We weren’t attacking. We shot only (14) shots and we’re averaging 55 a game. We were making uncharacteristic mistakes. We just couldn’t get anything going. I guess the good thing was that we got that out of the way in the first half.
“We knew we weren’t playing our best. We weren’t confident, we weren’t having fun. But we started getting to the basket in the second half, we started scoring a little bit and you could tell that the burden was lifted off. Our guys were embarrassed about the 10 points at halftime, but it doesn’t really matter how you win this time of year, as long as you advance.”
Grayslake North, which could notch its first 20-win season in school history with a win over Grayslake Central on Friday, outscored Northside Prep 17-4 in the third quarter to take firm control. The Knights got at least 5 points apiece out of all five starters in the second half.
Senior center Ben Guhl and senior guard Mark Hall both finished with 8 points for Grayslake North while teammates Danny Mateling and Zack Krupp tallied 6 and 5 points respectively.
For Northside Prep, which went winless two years ago and finished with just four wins last year, senior forward Michael McMannon led the way with 9 points.
“For a small school like us, to hold (Grayslake North) to 10 points in the first half, I was extremely thrilled,” Northside Prep coach Thomas Lentine said. “But they’re so big and we knew their length would eventually bother us. They had a 6-foot-7 guy (Guhl) going against 5-foot-10 kids for us, and you can only hold them for so long. We just don’t have the size.
“They (Grayslake North) figured it out finally, and our guys just ran out of gas.”