Boys Basketball: Sandburg continues win streak, beats Minooka

Updated: December 28, 2011 10:02PM

Sandburg believed that it was better than the 12th-seed that it received at the Hinsdale South Holiday Tournament.

However, coach Todd Allen admits that his Eagles didn’t have a good record at the time and deserved the low seed.

But following a 1-4 start, Sandburg has started to put things together, as evidenced by a five-game winning streak.

That run of success continued on Wednesday when the Eagles beat fourth-seed Minooka 37-29 on Wednesday in Darien.

“I was real proud of our effort defensively,” Allen said. “If you would have told me that we’d score 37 points and win by eight I would have told you that you were crazy. When you can hold a good team to 29 points, you’re getting good efforts from everyone.

“We struggled early even though we had a lot of guys returning with experience. I think our guys are starting to realize that it takes a lot of hard work in order to beat anybody. So we’re moving in the right direction.”

Sandburg (6-4) built up a 26-15 lead midway through the third quarter following a layup from Brian Dace (13 points).

Minooka (7-3) closed to within 26-22 after three periods and still only trailed 31-29 with 1:10 left in the game.

But the Eagles wrapped things up by scoring the final six points to earn a spot in Thursday’s 7:45 p.m. semifinals.

“That was an extra physical game and we just stayed together as a team and played hard,” Dace said. “At the beginning of the year, our chemistry wasn’t all that great but now it’s unbelievable and now we’re playing good basketball and it’s exciting.”

Sandburg, which led 19-14 at halftime, also got seven points from Nick Lehnerer and 11 rebounds from Malek Harris.

The Indians were led by Jacob Hogen (nine points, six rebounds), Lavell Dean (nine points) and Benjamin Heide (six points).

“Both teams played really hard and tough,” Minooka coach Scott Tanaka said. “We’re both actually very good offensively but it just came down to both teams playing phenomenal defense. They just got to a couple of more loose ball than we did.

“I was very proud of our kids and how we grew today and I felt that we got much better as a basketball team. Sandburg is the best team that we’ve played so far.”

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