Friday, November 6, 2009 11:06 PM CST
Lake Land seeks better start against Illinois Central
By BRIAN NIELSEN, Sports Editor
bnielsen@jg-tc.com
Rather than a Highland team that finished ninth in the national junior college basketball tournament last season, Lake Land now faces an Illinois Central College team that was “only” 24-9 and a regional finalist.
That doesn’t leave any reason for coach Cedric Brown not to be stressing to his Lakers that the tip-off at Laker Fieldhouse is 7 p.m. today, not whenever they began playing Monday night.
Brown does not want a repeat of the season opener in which Highland raced to a 19-4 lead and then held off an encouraging but unsuccessful comeback bid by Lake Land, which lost 74-68.
“Late in the game Monday night we’d just expended so much energy we couldn’t finish it,” Brown said. “We’ve been talking about having a high intensity level and high energy from the first five minutes. We have to set the pace the first five minutes and I’m confident we’ll do that.”
While Illinois Central enjoyed considerable more success than Lake Land last season, both teams are mostly new now.
Still, ICC, coached by former Illinois player Tony Wysinger, got off to a winning start beating St. Ambrose’s junior varsity team 87-53 on Tuesday.
“I think they have one returning player,” Brown said. “They are going to be a well-schooled basketball team. Tony does a real good job of getting them to run their stuff and play real good defense. They are going to be very methodical offensively and very strong defensively.
“The (Dauntrell) Hill kid is a very high flyer at the 2 (shooting guard). He shoots the ball well and does a good job of penetrating into the teeth of the defense.”
A 6-foot-3 freshman from Grand Rapids, Mich., Hill led ICC with 16 points in the opener while Peoria Manual’s John Washington, a 5-10 sophomore, added 15 and freshman Kulawnie Saunders, another Grand Rapids, Mich., product, scored 12.
Mattoon High School fans probably also remember former Bloomington All-Big 12 Conference standout James Monroe who plays for the Cougars.
Another Big 12 product, sophomore Layton Seeber of Champaign Centennial, led Lake Land with 20 points in Monday’s opener.
Moussa Gueye, a 7-footer from Senegal, had 19 points, 12 rebounds and three rebounds in his Lake Land debut.
Brown would like to think the initiation is over a Lake Land team with so many new faces.
“Highland had two players who returned from their national tournament team and we had guys not knowing what to expect,” Brown said. “We’ll play with a renewed intensity Saturday night.”
Contact Brian Nielsen at bnielsen@jg-tc.com or 238-6856
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
|
|
