Schaumburg not rattled by Palatine

It's kind of hard to rattle this Schaumburg team.

The Saxons boys varsity basketball team has faced some of the toughest competition in the state and it has definitely toughened them up and prepped them well for the Mid-Suburban West.

Take Palatine, for instance. At the Pirates gym Saturday night, the Saxons shot better than 50 percent from the floor, near 50 percent from beyond the arc, handled the ball cleanly most of the game and hammered the boards en route to a convincing 54-38 win in which they never trailed.

"We played well. I thought we played hard. I thought we were physical," was how Saxons head coach Matt Walsh summed up his club's effort and near game-long double-digit lead.

And while point guard Javon McDonald scored 20 points and made some highlight-reel shots and dishes, he wasn't the whole story.

"I think we had a lot of contributions from a lot of guys," Walsh continued.

Indeed they did. When Palatine (7-11, 2-3) made a little run in the second quarter, junior forward Chris Spandiary came off the bench and did nothing but bury 3-pointers to push the lead out to a bulging double digits by intermission.

Big men Kurt Kempema and sophomore Jim Lundquist combined for 13 points, spurred Schaumburg's rebounding advantage and made some whirling-dervish moves of their own around the basket. In addition, they helped force Palatine into a lot of missed shots around the basket.

"Everyone was ready to go," McDonald noted, on the heels of a discouraging division loss to Barrington. He credited a lot of his performance to his coaches, who "told me to penetrate," and he did, effectively.

The Saxons (7-8, 3-2) are playing with a chip on their shoulder because too many of their losses were the result of the inability to "tighten up a few little things," he said.

For Palatine, it was a lot of big things. The Pirates shot just 12-of-30 from the floor, 1-of-5 from the arc and had no one in double figures, although John Millin (8) deserved to be for all the shots he had roll off the rim.

His third-period shooting got the Pirates back within 30-24, with some help from an Austin Marrison 3-point play and Josh Baldus' hard work inside. But the Pirates couldn't sustain anything.

"Every time we inched closer, we'd go to the other end and we couldn't get a stop," said Palatine coach Eric Millstone. "Their [Schaumburg's] pressure got to us. We were starting our offense too far away from the basket."