Bair, Glenbard South too hot for Fenton

Regardless of what shot he got, and most were good, Billy Bair couldn't miss.

Glenbard South's 6-foot-5 senior forward made his first 9 attempts, not missing till the third quarter of the Raiders' 62-38 Metro Suburban West win over visiting Fenton.

"One of those nights, I guess," the Illinois State football recruit said after scoring a game-high 18 points to go along with 5 rebounds, 3 steals and 2 blocks.

"Their big (Derrian Warner) was playing behind me so I couldn't really make any post moves, so I had to step out. So I hit some outside shots," said Bair, who also capitalized inside thanks to aware low-block passing by his brother, 6-5 junior Charlie Bair.

"You have a lot of issues, especially if your biggest guy (Joe Andrews) is 6-4 and you're really scrapping for everything you can," said Fenton coach Josh Payton. "So if you allow them to get into that flow, which happened to us, it's hard to kind of stop the freight train from rolling like that."

It took a bit for Glenbard South (5-2, 2-0) to get rolling. Fenton (3-3, 0-1) had a lot to do with that. Andrews scored twice inside to help the Bison tie it up 10-10 at 4:28 of the first quarter.

Then Billy Bair hit a pullup jumper and, as Payton said, the Bison's motion offense went stagnant with three straight missed shots and then 4 consecutive turnovers. Glenbard South led 20-12 after a quarter.

"We really just had to box out and our defense wasn't there the entire game. We were supposed to go intensity, box out, get the big men in trouble. But we couldn't do that today," said Fenton guard Bryan Larsen, whose 12 points joined guard Eric Trujillo for team honors.

Billy Bair scored 8 of the Raiders' 18 second-quarter points to take a comfortable 38-22 lead into halftime.

"Our bigs just worked really hard in the post and our guards did a good job giving us the ball in good spots to score," he said.

Charlie Bair and 6-4 Johnny LaPonte scored 8 points apiece.

After halftime Trujillo had a couple spurts, still Glenbard South ran the margin to 55-30 with 1:21 left in the third quarter when Kyle Carli canned a 3 and Peter Jeske added his sole basket of the game.

Through three quarters, up 55-34, Glenbard South made 25 of 37 shot attempts, 68 percent.

"Certainly our shooting percentage was higher than it's been the last few games. But I think it also helped that we played under control. We've been playing a little bit helter-skelter, playing out of control," said Glenbard South coach Wade Hardtke.

"Really the key tonight was we were able to play really what I think is going to be our basketball. Today I thought we were able to maintain that all game and this is the first time this season that we've been able to do that," he said.