Grayslake Central trips up Dundee-Crown

One of the things Grayslake Central boys basketball coach Kosta Kougias reminded his team of coming into Tuesday's Fox Valley Conference crossover game against Dundee-Crown was that D-C was good for being in the right position on defense, so the key would be rotating the Chargers 2-3 times to get the Rams to the rim.

Not only did that game plan pay huge dividends in the Rams' 48-30 win in Carpentersville to make it 3-straight and their sixth win in 7 tries, Central had no other option to go to after a stagnant 2-for-10 first quarter clip didn't make a dent.

The Rams attacked the cup for 8 of their 22 points in the paint in the second quarter and used a 5-minute, 13-0 run capped by Jack Beckman's feed inside to a cutting Sam Ruhlmann with 2:47 left for a 21-12 lead. That gave Central (10-7) more than enough to down the Chargers (1-14), who fell victim to their fourth-straight defeat.

"The fact that we started to attack the rim a little more ..." Kougias said. "I thought when we started doing that and capitalizing at the free throw line, that helped out."

The Rams went 6-for-11 in each of the second and third quarters, where Ruhlmann did most of his damage for a game-high 18 points while David Kienzle added 11. Ruhlmann eventually knocked in two 3-pointers and went 8-for-11 from the free-throw line, but knew when the screens became more solid in the second, the Rams' offense could gel.

"Anytime you can go on a (13-0) run like that that's huge," Ruhlmann said. "Anytime you can go on a run like that it sets apart teams, that's huge. It was truly one of the crucial parts of this game."

And despite a 39 percent clip on 16-for-41 shooting, Central used its defense to create offense and sank 13 of its 18 free throws, which was beneficial since it went the first 5:20 of the fourth without a point while spending the entire quarter in the bonus. But D-C couldn't capitalize during that stretch and owned a 21-13 advantage in turnovers, with 4 coming in the critical stages of the fourth that simply couldn't stage any comeback.

"That's been our bugaboo all year," Chargers coach Lance Huber said. "It's hard to play defense when you have to play it twice as much as the other team because you gave them 25 extra chances a game."

Brandon Barber and Nick Shydlowski finished with 7 points each for Dundee-Crown, which only put up 28 shots. The Rams scored 21 points off 10 steals, including 3 each from Kienzle and Shepley. Kienzle scored 7 points alone in the third while Grant Hupp and Ryan Spicer combined for 10 points off the bench.

"We've been starting to get some wins, getting some momentum is great," Ruhlmann said. "A road win here is always a solid win so we'll definitely take that and it's something to build on."