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Grant measures up against North Chicago

By most standards, North Chicago has been the gold standard of boys basketball in the Prairie Division of the North Suburban Conference.

Before last season, the Warhawks had won seven straight Prairie Division championships. And they had even made two trips downstate, with a second-place finish in 2012.

"North Chicago has been the frontrunner in this division for years," said Grant coach Wayne Bosworth, whose first varsity coaching job was as an assistant at North Chicago in 2005. "They are what you want to measure yourself against in the Prairie Division."

Grant is suddenly catching up on the measuring stick.

Heading into this season, Grant had never beaten North Chicago in Bosworth's previous seven years as head coach of the Bulldogs.

And last season, Grant won just three games, far from being in North Chicago's stratosphere.

On Saturday night, the stars aligned just perfectly for Grant, which out-lasted North Chicago in overtime for a 72-67 NSC Prairie Division win.

Not only was it the first victory in years for Grant over North Chicago, it was a victory for first place in the division for the worst-to-first Bulldogs. Grant is now 7-0 in the Prairie (12-9 overall) while North Chicago drops into second place behind Grant at 7-1 (11-9 overall).

"We all made goals at the beginning of the season, individual and team and one of our team goals was to win the division," said Grant junior guard Ben Kusiak, who scored 21 points, including 19 in the second half and 6 in overtime. "We knew that would be a big goal after what happened last year, but we really wanted to go for that. We thought we could do it."

The Bulldogs used a balanced attack to stay unbeaten in division play at the halfway point. They got scoring from eight players, including a game-high 23 points from junior forward John Kerr.

Senior forward James Mobley also came up big in overtime, where Grant out-scored North Chicago, 18-13. He had 6 of his 8 points in the extra session.

"Our guys dug in and they were mentally tough," Bosworth said. "North Chicago put some good runs on us, but we handled it well. We had some big layups down the stretch. We were strong and we put the game away."

Grant beat North Chicago's pressure in overtime and netted easy layups.

The Warhawks nearly balanced that out with 8 overtime points from Simeon Henton, who finished with 20 points. Marreon White also had 20 points for North Chicago.

"Grant played a great game and they played smart," North Chicago coach Gerald Coleman said. "It's a good thing they beat us though because we're trying to get ready for the playoffs and we can't think that people are going to roll over dead because we're North Chicago."

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