Boys Basketball: Richards overpowers Evergreen Park

Updated: January 27, 2012 8:54PM

Watching his team struggle at times offensively this season, Richards coach John Chappetto tried to instill the same message over and over again: Your shot might not be dropping, but your defense should always be there.

Chasing host Evergreen Park into offensive struggles of its own, Richards broke open a game that was close at halftime and left with a 65-50 South Suburban Red win Friday.

“We want to hang our hat on our defense,” Chappetto said. “From our defense, we want to get easy baskets. We haven’t been a great scoring team, so we tell the team anyone who wants to play has to play defense.”

Raynard Judkins led Richards (11-8, 6-2) with 13 points on 4-of-5 three-point shooting. Lavante Smith contributed 11 points and nine rebounds.

Brian Townsend Jr. (12 points), Turron Clayton (11) and Jacquet McClendon (10 points, 12 rebounds) paced Evergreen Park (9-15, 3-6).

While Judkins consistently hit from outside for Richards, Smith did his damage inside.

“We’ve been playing well, and we play well together,” Smith said. “It felt good hitting the glass, and we’re trying to show what we can do as a team.”

Holding a 32-23 halftime lead, Richards scored seven unanswered points on a Judkins three-pointer, a Cortez Harper score off an offensive rebound and two Harper free throws.

The Bulldogs led by as many as 19 points in the second half, going up 59-38 in the fourth quarter.

Evergreen Park had its chances to stick with Richards in the third quarter but couldn’t get the ball to drop its way and never got the deficit back to single digits.

The Mustangs shot 16-of-43 from the field in the game.

“We’ve struggled with shooting quite a bit,” Evergreen Park coach Pat Flannigan said. “We ran our stuff and got good looks, but we didn’t knock them down. We didn’t finish.”

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