Grayslake North slips past Huntley

They were tired of being pushed around.

So the Grayslake North Knights finally toughened up.

After trailing Huntley for most of the first three quarters, and by 10 points to start the fourth quarter, Grayslake North turned up the defensive pressure, dug deep and rallied for a 71-69 character-building victory in its first game of the season at the Johnsburg/Richmond-Burton Thanksgiving tournament Monday night.

"It's like the last 10 minutes we just decided that we didn't like being bullied," Grayslake North coach Todd Grunloh said. "This was kind of a common theme for us in our summer games, too. We were always a team that got pushed around. It become like a personal thing, like 'I don't want to be pushed around, I don't want to lose.' And then we would decide to get tough. That's what happened tonight."

In crunchtime, Grayslake North got a nice combination of tough full court pressure that forced Huntley turnovers and an offensive explosion by junior guard Ryan Connolly.

Connolly, who has been nursing a wrist injury throughout the preseason, scored 17 of his game-high 32 points in the fourth quarter, taking charge of the Knights' offense, and essentially the game.

Connolly just missed matching his career high, which is 35 points.

"I told my team that we needed to step it up and everyone knew that so we turned up the intensity on defense," Connolly said. "And I wasn't going to let my team lose. Not this way.

"I've been trying to work on helping my team in a lot of different ways."

There were four ties over the last six minutes of the game, including a 65-65 deadlock with less than a minute remaining.

As Grayslake North was getting big baskets from Connolly, Huntley was getting big baskets from junior guard Uchenna Egekeze, who finished with a team-high 26 points.

He gave Huntley a 66-65 lead with about 45 seconds to play.

But moments later, Huntley was hampered by another of its 7 fourth-quarter turnovers, thanks in large part to Grayslake North's full court pressure.

The Knights then scored the next 6 points of the game to ice the win.

"They turned up their pressure defensively and we couldn't execute," Huntley coach Will Benson said. "We had turnovers and obviously (Connolly) is a really good player and we couldn't stop him and he scored 17 points (in the fourth). That's not good enough defense. But even with all that being said, we still had a one-point lead with less than a minute left.

"There's a lot of positives, but some little things we didn't execute, and credit to them for that defense."

Grayslake North also got double-figures out of Jamon Thomas (15 points) and Jason Donohue (12 points).

For Huntley, Ryan Crosby had 11 points and Ryan Sroka had 10 points.