Boys Basketball: North Lawndale pulls away from Leo in second half

Updated: January 15, 2012 8:05PM

It was a good old-fashioned Public League/Catholic league match-up between North Lawndale and Leo. The Public League claimed honors with a 71-65 victory in the MLK Dream Classic Saturday at Young.

The Phoenix doubled-up Leo in the first quarter, leading 22-11. But the lead was trimmed to five points at 33-28 by halftime.

North Lawndale claimed an 11 point lead at the end of the third quarter, 51-40, then used a 13-4 run that pushed the league to 64-44 with 5:13 remaining, starting with a dunk by Keith Mac and two consecutive forced turnovers by Davonte Johnson, who scored the next two baskets.The Lions committed seven turnovers in the final quarter.

AJ Smith led North Lawndale with 21 points and 11 rebounds, Johnson finished with 15 points eight assists, and six steals, and Mac finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds.

“We have to do a better job at finishing the game,” North Lawndale coach Louis Thorpe said. Thorpe said he was pleased with the teams overall effort. ‘‘Johnson is our stabilizer. He got us back on track. AJ and Mac did an excellent job on the boards and contesting their big man. Overall I was pleased.”

''We didn’t have our legs down the stretch and we made some costly errors,'' Leo coach Noah Cannon said. ''They’re a typically public league team, a lot of ball pressure and up and down play and we did not respond well to their pressure today.”

© 2012 Sun-Times Media, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or distributed without permission. For more information about reprints and permissions, visit www.suntimesreprints.com. To order a reprint of this article, click here.