Glenbard South beats Marmion
Coming off an exciting overtime victory over Ridgewood on Friday night, it'd have been easy for the Glenbard South boys basketball team to be lethargic on Saturday at home against Marmion.
The lactic acid sets in after 36 minutes of ball, and it takes time to get into a rhythm. However, it was Marmion, who also played on Friday night and lost a nailbiter to St. Laurence, who struggled all night. Glenbard South rode the momentum of Friday night's win to a 56-47 victory Saturday.
The Raiders applied ball pressure early - forcing 12 first-half turnovers and 21 for the game - and let guards Tavion Keith and Brandon Whiteside go to work offensively.
Keith had 6 points in the first quarter as Glenbard South (8-10) took a 16-10 lead into the second quarter. That's where Whiteside heated up, pouring in 8 points in the period coming off a 26-point effort on Friday.
Whiteside finished the half with an offensive rebound and a putback at the buzzer to give the Raiders a 30-20 lead. He and Keith finished with 20 and 19, respectively, but it was Keith's ability to penetrate that caused the majority of Marmion's defensive issues all night.
"Usually our coaches tell us to get in the paint and be aggressive and I thought we did well tonight," Keith said. "Usually (Whiteside) is our leading scorer and I thought we were more evenly balanced tonight."
Junior forward Tommy Powers also kicked in 10 points for the Raiders.
Defensively, in addition to the ball pressure, Glenbard South did an admirable job on 6-foot-9 Marmion center Mick Sullivan considering they hadn't seen a scouting report on the Cadets until Saturday morning.
"Our bigs stepped up. That kid is a load inside, and I think we held him to 5 points and he was relatively quiet on the boards as well," Glenbard South coach Wade Hardtke.
"I think they did a good job. I needed to post up harder. I wasn't getting the position I usually do. I should have been trying to get deeper position," Sullivan added.
In the second half Glenbard South continued to dictate the tempo and kept Marmion (8-12) at arm's length, taking a 44-32 lead to the fourth quarter. However, Marmion did make one charge when buckets on back-to-back possessions by Sullivan and senior guard Evan Pugh made it 46-41 with 4:32 to play.
Pugh would finish with 9 points on the night and Jon Reid led Marmion with 11.
Unfortunately for the Cadets, that was as close as they got. The Raiders stringed stops together to end the game.
"I thought we played a full ballgame tonight, which was a good thing," Hardtke said. "It was a quick turnaround, but I think we're starting to pick it up. This is two good games that we've put together back-to-back. I think we're playing consistently hard and that's something that we haven't had up to this point."