Lake Zurich sees opener slip away

Bears and Vikings played again Monday night on a basketball court at Palatine High School. Brett Favre was far, far away.

And the Bears' coach in an Ed Molitor Thanksgiving Classic boys basketball opener is a … Pitcher.

Billy Pitcher, that is.

Lake Zurich's coach wanted to be batting 1.000 after his first game as John Zarr's successor. But North's Vikings scored the final 7 points to escape with a 45-44 victory.

LZ had taken a 44-38 lead on a Mike Boyd bucket with 2:20 left in the contest.

Pitcher, stunned, remained on the court as his Bears exited to a conference room. He grabbed a cup of water, took a few sips and tried to absorb the tough result. Pitcher then tossed an empty cup toward a garbage can.

It went in.

Nothing but garbage-can liner.

Small consolation, no doubt.

“We need to do a better job of taking care of the basketball,” he said later, alluding to the Bears' 9 turnovers in the first quarter, when LZ scored the first four points of the game but trailed 8-4 after the frame. “Maybe it was first-game jitters; maybe it was because we played a lot of new guys.”

His club settled down impressively in the second quarter, using a 12-0 run to take a 19-14 advantage at 3:07. Bears junior guard Brenden Seeger capped the stretch with a trey; classmate Doug Murphy (6 points, 2 drawn charges), a forward, hit all 4 of his free-throw attempts.

“We were able to execute our sets, and we were able to spread the floor,” Pitcher said. “We got more aggressive, and we didn't give up on the boards. We were looking good.”

The Bears had an attractive 25-18 lead at the break.

Bears senior guard Colin Rathe (5 points) nailed a 3-pointer to halt a 6-0 run by the Vikes midway through the third quarter. A put-back by Boyd, 57 seconds later, put LZ up 34-27. LZ junior forward Mirko Grcic netted 4 of his team-high 14 points in the quarter.

“He is very versatile,” Pitcher said of the 6-foot-5 Grcic, who hit a pair of 3-pointers and looked comfortable inside and outside the paint. “He shoots well, posts up well, does a lot of things well. We expected what he gave us tonight.”

A Murphy field goal swelled LZ's lead to 38-32 in the first minute of the fourth quarter. Vikings senior guard Andre Shaw (19 points, 5 treys) answered with a 3-pointer and connected on another 3 at 6:09.

LZ junior forward Jeff O'Brien (7 points) had executed the improv shot of the night earlier in the frame, scoring on a left-handed baby-hook/shot-put combo from the middle of the lane. He twisted; Bears fans shouted.

It was LZ's final highlight Monday night.

“We're good enough,” said Rathe, whose 3-point attempt as time expired bounced off the front of a rim. “We looked good when we picked up the intensity (in the second quarter) and got everything going and ran a little harder. We have big players, quick players. And we have the abilities to beat some teams.

“I still think we can win out (win LZ's 3 other Classic games).”

Boyd grabbed a team-high 5 rebounds, one more than O'Brien's board total. Niles North guard Mychael Henley finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds.

LZ (0-1) plays its next tourney game Wednesday night against the host school; Niles North (1-0) faces Phillips at 7:45 p.m. today.