North Chicago picking up steam

Every season North Chicago boys basketball coach Gerald Coleman predicts that his team will win the state tournament, and every year his team falls a little short.

Coleman feels that his could be the year that the Warhawks go all the way in Class 3A.

“The competition gets tougher as you go and everything has to click at the right time,” Coleman said. “Last year we had some off-the court issues that took us from the things we wanted to do.”

Coleman also knows his team has to take care of buisness before the tournament starts.

His Warhawks continued to do that Friday night, as they blasted visiting Wauconda 86-41 to remain perfect in the North Suburban Prairie Division.

North Chicago’s JaVarius Amos-Mays led all scorers with 26 points, which included 6 slams. Kurt Hall added 21 points.

Wauconda fell to 11-6 and 3-2 in the division with its second straight loss.

North Chicago’s Simeon Henton got the game rolling with a 3-pointer to start a 10-0 run. Wauconda missed its first 7 shots, before Dion Head put the Bulldogs on the scoreboard with two 3-pointers in the row.

North Chicago led only 14-12 at the end of the first quarter. Joey Lovelle (4 steals) then opened the second quarter by sinking a layup to tie the score.

But then Amos-Mays’ first slam started a 14-2 run. His second dunk capped a 12-1 run and North Chicago led 41-18 at halftime.

The Warhawks put on shooting display the rest of the game and were up 69-32 after three.

Ricky Sidlowski led Wauconda with 10 points, while Head finished with 9.

“We had shots at the rim. We were point blank and we just missed the shots,” Wauconda coach Scott Luetschwager said. “It hurt. But then we were able to fight back and tie the game up. But we lost a lot of energy trying to gain all that ground back up (from the early deficit), and they were able to go on a big run.”