Glenbard East defends its Sides
After going scoreless in Friday’s huge victory over West Aurora, Glenbard East senior Marvin Grant-Clark collected the Rams’ first basket Saturday against Plainfield East.
“Yep, the first one,” Grant-Clark said. “I had to get that little streak going, get it off my back.”
While there were concerns of a letdown following the Rams’ biggest victory of the season, they were quickly rectified. Thanks to another huge third quarter, the Rams even won somewhat comfortably 71-59 in the final game of Glenbard East’s When Sides Collide Shootout in Lombard.
After a back-and-forth first half, Glenbard East (12-5) went on a 19-0 run between the third and fourth quarters, holding the Bengals (7-10) scoreless for 7:57 to establish a 57-43 lead with less than five minutes left. The Rams led by double digits the rest of the way.
“This had all of the makings of the upset, coming out flat. We didn’t play the greatest first half, but it wasn’t bad,” Glenbard East coach Scott Miller said. “They were content to just kind of run up and down the floor with them instead of actually compete and play our style of basketball. In the second half we did that.”
Glenbard East senior Tahron Harvey equaled his personal high of 24 points for the second night in a row with two 3-pointers.
During the 19-0 run Mike Kjeldsen and Jaron Hall did most of the damage in a balanced attack.
Harvey didn’t score a point. He didn’t even take a shot.
“Our team can really go deep,” Grant-Clark said. “We brought energy coming out of halftime, and once you get the energy, you’ve got to keep running and feeding off of it.”
Before the game Miller alerted his players that Plainfield East beat DuPage Valley Conference rival Naperville Central 58-56 Tuesday.
The Bengals led the Rams 35-34 at halftime behind Aaron Jordan and Nick Novak, who each made four 3s for the game. After combining for 26 points in the first half, they were limited to 8 third-quarter points by the Rams’ zone and man-to-man defenses.
“We locked down defensively. We ran and scored some fastbreak points,” Harvey said. “We knew we had to step up because they beat Naperville Central. Naperville Central is always good.”
Harvey had 14 points at halftime and helped seal the deal in the fourth quarter with 10 points. After a Jordan basket put Plainfield East ahead 43-38 in the third quarter, he didn’t score again.
“We had to battle every possession as hard as we could and we started to run out of gas,” Plainfield East coach Branden Adkins said. “They can score. They’re senior-heavy, they outsized us, they outathleticized us.”