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Lake Forest looks sharp in tuneup victory over Grant

The only North Suburban Conference crossover game this week that really counts for much is tonight's battle for the league title between Lake Division champion Stevenson and Prairie Division winner North Chicago.

On Tuesday night, the rest of the league played their obligatory end-of-season crossovers, with the biggest priority being tuning up for the upcoming state tournament.

Lake Forest looked tournament-ready in a 64-54 win at Grant. The Scouts benefited from a healthy offensive balance of 3-point shooting and points in the paint.

Lake Forest hit a total of eight 3-pointers and got a game-high 19 points out of 6-foot-7 junior forward Lorenzo Edwards.

"This was definitely a tune-up game, see what we need to work on going forward," Edwards said. "I think we'll make a lot of adjustments for our first (tournament) game on Tuesday. On-ball defense we'll work on. And finishing our layups would be a huge thing.

"But I think overall we're clicking on all cylinders right now. We're going hard at practice every day and we're all improving."

Lake Forest, which improves to 17-9 overall, built up a 22-14 lead at the end of the first quarter thanks to 13 straight points by Edwards. The Scouts pushed that advantage to 11 points (37-26) by halftime.

"I was looking at our execution and getting back to fundamentals and letting the kids know that now is not the time to stop improving," Lake Forest coach Phil LaScala said. "It's 'don't stay the same.' That's the biggest thing. I thought we kept getting better in the second half, especially offensively.

"We had 11 turnovers in the first half and just 5 in the second half. That was a big thing, too."

Grant, which was down starting point guard Logan Lewis and key reserve Drew Walker, both sick with the flu, struggled offensively as the game went on. The Bulldogs hit just 38 percent of their shots in the second half. They fell behind by as many as 19 points early in the fourth quarter.

"We played better than we have lately, and without two key players, that was definitely a positive," said Grant forward John Kerr, who scored a team-high 15 points. "But a loss is still a loss."

The losses have been piling up lately for Grant, which was once in position to clinch the Prairie Division crown.

But the Bulldogs missed out on that opportunity in an emotionally charged loss two weeks ago at North Chicago, which essentially was the Prairie Division championship game.

Since then, Grant (13-15) has lost 5 games in a row.

"Tonight we took a step forward from where we were, so I was proud of our effort," Grant coach Wayne Bosworth said. "We'll try to build off this.

"We just didn't play well (over the previous four losses). If you look at both times we played North Chicago, even when we beat them here, it was a high, emotional game, beating them at our place. Then we came back from that and we were just dead against Vernon Hills (in a loss). Same thing when we lost to North Chicago at their place even though we had a 1-point lead with 20 seconds left. Then we lose (four straight games). I don't know if it's a hangover from a high emotional game or what.

"We have struggled to recover for those kinds of games. Bottom line is that we didn't come to play for two straight weeks after that second North Chicago game. Tonight, was the first night we finally got back after it."

Grant also got double-figures out of Kyle Dupree (11 points) and Andy Kaye (10 points). Edwards was Lake Forest's only double-figure scorer, but six players scored 5 or more points and a total of nine players scored for the Scouts.

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