Grayslake Central rolls past Woodstock

All season long, Grayslake Central senior Cam Neely has shown up in his King Kong costume to cheer on the boys basketball team.

And for the fifth time in the past six games, the Rams showed that they weren’t monkeying around, as they blasted visiting Woodstock 73-40 in a Fox Valley Conference Fox Division game Friday night.

Grayslake Central (7-8, 3-1) held Woodstock (6-10, 4-2) to only 12 shots in the first half in building a 38-14 lead.

“The kids played real well,” Grayslake Central coach Brian Moe said. “We executed well in getting the ball inside and kicking the ball back outside, and that’s something we have been working on in practice.”

Tim Abbott and Kyle Shepard led the Rams with 13 points each.

“Tim had a great game for us,” Moe said. “The past two games he has really played well. It’s nice to have that kind of scoring depth.”

Jordan Taylor added 10 points, while Sean Kirby and Casey Boyle each chipped in eight.

After the Rams built a 56-32 third-quarter lead, Moe decided to put his bench in the game for the entire fourth quarter.

Midway through the quarter, the home crowd erupted when reserve junior Ian Jackson scored his first basket as a varsity player.

Later in the quarter, Tyler Smith came in and scored his basket for the varsity.

Jordan Turner led Woodstock with 15 points, while Mike Sutter finished with 11 points.

“Our main focus was to stop their two main scorers,” Abbott said. “Once we started to stop them, it was hard for the rest of their players to score any points.’’

Jyron Aparri scored 8 points for the Blue Streaks. Woodstock started the second quarter by missing its first 7 shots. The Blue Streaks went 0 of 17 from the 3-point arc.

“I think if we had come out and shot the ball a little bit better, we would have been able to hang in,” Woodstock coach Alex Baker said. “That would have changed a lot of things.”