Boys Basketball: Cold shooting dooms Elmwood Park after hot start

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Updated: March 10, 2012 8:27AM

Elmwood Park’s boys basketball team came out sizzling, but ended up fizzling, in a Metro Suburban Conference contest Friday night.

Glenbard South didn’t let an early nine-point deficit stop it from running all over the host Tigers in posting a 54-38 win.

Raiders forward Dusko Despot (game-high 17 points, 8 rebounds, 3 blocks) helped Glenbard South (10-9, 6-3) come back. He scored 12 first-half points to lead a 23-4 run after Elmwood Park (10-9, 2-6) had jumped out to a 9-0 lead in the first 2 minutes, 15 seconds of the first quarter — on a pair of three-pointers by senior Julian Molinas (team-high 14 points, 7 rebounds) and another by senior David Lipiszko (3 steals).

But the usually hot-shooting Tigers turned to ice against the Raiders’ defensive pressure, and the Glenbard South offense took over in the paint, turning an 11-11 tie into a 29-18 halftime lead.

“We’re a better shooting team than that,” said Elmwood Park coach Mike Wasielewski. “We shoot about 40 percent from three (-point range). We’ve hit a million threes this year. We showed it in the first quarter but we couldn’t continue, and I think the kids started to press. Thirty-eight points is unacceptable for a varsity team. If you had told me earlier (Friday) that Glenbard South was going to score 54 points, I would have said, ‘Awesome, we’ve got this game.’ But we shot poorly — on our home court, too. Our defense was great. We played a good zone against them because they have more size than we do, and it worked well. Unfortunately, our shots just weren’t falling.”

Glenbard South coach Wade Hardtke said he was surprised when the Tigers lost their shooting touch.

“They shoot the ball very well, and they came out and hit three big shots right away,” he said. “It took us a while to establish our inside game, but once we finally did it got us back in the ballgame, and we were able to maintain control of the outside and inside from there on out. We’re still in the thick of the conference race, so coming into Elmwood Park is a tough road game — and you know they’re going to shoot the ball well and play hard — so this was a big win for us.”

After the first-quarter tie, the Raiders went on an 18-5 run — behind Despot’s seven points and four each by seniors Matt Jeske (6 points, 4 rebounds) and Jon Berrospi (10 points, 5 rebounds).

The Raiders had eight players contribute scoring-wise, including seniors Carl Lane (7 points) and Wesley Sanders (6 points). Ryan Childs chipped in four points off the bench.

Elmwood Park senior Marcellus Hunter came off the bench to score 10 points, and he hauled in six rebounds and had three steals. Senior Anthony Santiago tallied four points, and Alec Gomez added three.