Stay Connected with YourSeason
Boys Basketball: Undefeated Metea Valley wins league showdown
Updated: January 7, 2012 11:20PM
Metea Valley boys basketball coach Bob Vozza doesn’t highlight the fact that his team is undefeated this season to his players.
But he’s OK with the boys discussing it among themselves.
“We have the X on our backs right now,” Metea senior Ryan Solomon said. “We know that every team is gunning to be our first loss.”
Lake Park was the latest team to try to get the Mustangs Saturday, but after No. 6 Metea’s 61-45 Upstate Eight Valley win, the team will be able to keep discussing its undefeated mark until Wednesday’s showdown with Waubonsie Valley. That is, as long as Vozza isn’t within earshot, of course.
“We don’t really address it in the locker room,” Vozza said. “They do it on their own time. I think it’s OK, but we keep stressing that we have to continue to get better. We haven’t played a perfect game. We’re not even close to that. We have to get better if we want to achieve our goals.”
The first goal the Mustangs (14-0, 5-0) want to conquer is winning the conference title, and Lake Park (10-4, 4-1) came in tied with Metea atop the league standings. And for just over a half, the Lancers were more than game.
Both teams slogged through an ugly first half, and when Lake Park’s Dominique Spencer scored on a rebound putback to start the third quarter, the game was tied at 16-16.
“That was Upstate Eight, grind it out defense in the first half,” Vozza said. “We just couldn’t get anything going offensively. They locked down Kenny (Obendorf, who scored two of his nine points in the first half). They did a great job on him. It was a very physical game.”
But Metea finally got its footing offensively after that, and the Mustangs started to be their dominating selves again. They were unable to take advantage of Lake Park’s 16 first-half turnovers, but Metea kept forcing turnovers (31 in all) and that led to some easy offense in the second half.
A 13-2 run capped by a LaShawn Cargo three-pointer and a three-point play from Sean Davis gave Metea a 29-18 lead with 2:50 left in the third quarter. Though the Lancers were able to cut the lead to single digits a handful of times in the fourth, a late 11-2 run in the fourth quarter put the game away for good.
After scoring only 16 points in the first half, Metea exploded for 45 in the second half to keep the undefeated dream alive. Davis paced the Mustangs with 13 points; Milan Bojanic added 12 and Solomon scored 11 in yet another balanced effort.
“The whole undefeated thing just makes us work harder,” Bojanic said. “We have a lot of chemistry. We’ve been playing together for a long time. We knew we were going to be good, but it’s nice to have an undefeated record.”
Lake Park was led by 15 points off the bench from Dave Prentis.
© 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.
Cell Phone Alerts
Comments Click here to view or make a comment