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Riverside-Brookfield drops Fenton

Fenton boys basketball coach Chaz Taft built the Bison with the future in mind, forward Amari Reed the sole senior among a top-eight rotation of three sophomores, three juniors and a freshman.

Riverside-Brookfield had the edge in experience and height on Tuesday and it translated to the scoreboard. The visiting Bulldogs won the Metro Suburban Blue game 50-32 in Bensenville.

"I like this group, a good group of guys," Taft said. "They work hard in practice and I just told them in the locker room, we just need to get better at the fundamentals tomorrow and Thursday, and we play on Friday. The great thing is we play on Friday, so let's just get better tomorrow."

Riverside-Brookfield - whose first-year coach, Mike Reingruber, is a former Bulldog just as Taft is a former Bison player - got off to a 19-9 lead after one quarter. Ryan Cicenas, Andrew Veon and Jason Bageanis, all at least 6-foot-4, held the edge on the backboards.

Fenton (1-7, 0-4) rallied to within 19-15 early in the second quarter on a Jose Alvarez 3 and a three-point play by Reed. Then the Bison chilled nearly six minutes, committing 5 turnovers and missing 3 shots.

"It was a lack of focus, maybe a couple turnovers," said Reed, who scored a team-high 15 points. "And we weren't really playing great defense. We have to help our teammates out when there's drives to the basket, and we really didn't."

"We knew we wanted to try to speed them up and force them into turnovers and hopefully create some easy baskets for ourselves. We got going early in the first half," Reingruber said.

"The first half was pretty balanced, a lot of kids contributed and we just carried it over to the second half," he said.

Riverside-Brookfield (4-5, 3-1) led 36-17 at halftime and 45-21 after three quarters. Against Fenton's triangle-and-two, 1-3-1 extended zone and then man-to-man defense, six Bulldogs scored between 6 and 9 points, Veon leading the way.

Fenton forward Diamon King is one of those sophomores working toward improvement with teammates such as freshman guard Marcus Rule, who scored 7 points.

"I love this team and I know we can do it," said the 6-2 King, who scored 5 points with 8 rebounds. "I have my utmost faith in this team. We have the physical part down, no matter our size or anything. It's just the mental part of the game."

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