Peterson to lead Buffalo Grove boys basketball

Keith Peterson is Buffalo Grove’s new boys basketball head coach.

The longtime Bison assistant is hoping his familiarity with the players and program makes for an easy transition to his first head-coaching gig.

“It’s huge,” he said. “We had our first meeting last week, and everybody knew what to expect from me, and vice versa.”

Peterson has had a role in the BG program for the last 11 years, including eight as a freshman coach and three as a varsity assistant to Ryan O’Connor, who stepped away earlier this spring. Peterson says the Bison will continue to approach the game in mainly the same way, but with a few tweaks.

“We’ll still do a lot of the same things — we may push the ball a little bit more on offense, and maybe use a little more full-court press on defense,” he said. “And we might have some different types of ball screens on offense. But mainly we just want to get better at the things we’ve always taught in the program.”

Peterson excelled as a high school player at Palatine, and later at North Park University, where he was a team co-captain in 2001.

The Bison are planning to have a pair of proven players back who excelled as juniors: Scott Smithern and all-conference and all-area pick Andrew Apel.

“I’m excited to get started,” Peterson said.