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Boys Basketball: Lyons cruises past Waukegan
Updated: January 9, 2012 6:47PM
The visitors turned the Dog Pound into the Lions’ den on Saturday, as surging Lyons roared past host Waukegan 66-39 in a nonconference game.
Though just 5-9 on the season, the Lions have won four of their last six and three straight. Waukegan (6-8), too, had been better of late, going 2-2 and playing competitively at the prestigious Pontiac holiday tournament.
But that all changed on Saturday, as one team brought its shooting touch and the other didn’t.
“We’re playing a lot better than we did earlier in the year. Our top seven players last year were seniors,” said Lyons coach Tom Sloan. “In the playoff last year, the only junior who really played was Kenny (Smith). So, we didn’t really have any game experience coming back, except for Kenny.
“It’s taken us awhile to get that experience and more than anything, to develop some confidence. We’re shooting a lot better than we did in the first 5-6 games. Defensively we’ve figured out what we can do to be successful.
“The kids play hard. It’s a great group to work with because they put in so much effort.”
That effort was evident against Waukegan, as the Lions led 38-22 at half, 50-28 after three, and was up 30 before Waukegan’s Dijon Ross hit a three at the final horn.
Smith led Lyons in scoring with 15, while Matt Robare had 11 and Jarryd Heath 10 off the bench.
“It took our seniors awhile to build some chemistry,” Smith said. “We’ve been practicing hard, and the things we were doing badly at the beginning of the season, we’re doing much better now. We were on a six-game losing streak. It’s tough to lose a lot of games like that, but coach told us not to get down on ourselves and we didn’t.”
For the game, Lyons was 26-of-45 from the field, including 7-of-16 from three-point range. Waukegan was 11-of-41 shooting, including 5-of-22 from behind the arc.
“Lyons did a great job making shots, just like they did to us last year,” said Waukegan coach Ron Ashlaw, whose team lost by 25 at Lyons last winter. “We thought we had a good game plan coming in. We executed it well at times, but we could not hit a shot.”
Akeem Springs had 15 points to lead Waukegan, which was on holiday break all last week and wasn’t slated to return to school until Monday.
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