Round Lake, Carmel take steps forward

A 7-21 season which ended with a 40-point loss would figure to evoke emotions of happiness that it’s over.

That’s not what first-year Round Lake coach Jimmy Roberts saw when he returned to school the day after Wednesday’s 57-17 Class 4A regional semifinal loss at Fremd.

“I was talking to two players in the hallway and they were almost in tears because they didn’t know what they were going to do today,” Roberts said. “There are a lot of good things happening and that’s a credit to the kids and the coaches.”

One of the best things to happen was Monday’s 60-45 regional win over Rolling Meadows. It was Round Lake’s first in the postseason since 2006.

“There are all the little steps you need to take as a program and as a team,” Roberts said. “A huge step is winning in the postseason.

“If we had gotten beat by Meadows, going into next year we’d still be looking to take the first step of winning a state tournament game. Meadows was missing two kids and you can’t look past that, but a win is a win.

“You realize it’s a little more doable to take the next step and win another game and play in a regional final.”

One of the best signs Roberts saw was how everyone handled the victory.

“It was one of our better games and when we got in the locker room the kids and coaches were excited,” Roberts said. “But we talked about it after the game and I asked, ‘Do you think you played great?’

“All around everyone said, ‘No, we just played.’ We played how we’re capable of playing more than anything.”

And Roberts didn’t see any drop-off in intensity even though Round Lake’s shooting plummeted from 55 percent against Meadows to 14 percent (6-for-43) against Fremd.

Junior guard Juddon Carter, who surpassed 1,000 career points this season on Feb. 17 at Lakes, guarded two of the Mid-Suburban League’s top long-range threats in Meadows’ Tyler Gaedele and Fremd’s Zach Monaghan.

“I’ll say, ‘we’re playing the best shooter here and the best shooter there,’ and Juddon really takes that to heart,” Roberts said. “It was the same against Monaghan. He competed to the end.”

So Roberts hopes this was just a beginning for a program that has struggled under a revolving door of coaches. The graduation of 6-foot-5 Nick Lange will hurt but Carter heads a strong returning nucleus that includes junior point guard Daniel Uriostegui, junior forward Eddie Acevedo and sophomore Mark Jennings.

“Guys are excited about the off-season,” Roberts said. “I think we can compete and really have a chance.”

Carmel’s going forward with Bowen: Ten victories is the same total Carmel’s boys basketball team finished with a year ago.

But junior Brandon Motzel will tell you it was a lot different in the Corsairs’ first season under coach Tim Bowen.

“Coach Bowen was great and he turned us around fast,” said the 6-foot-5 Motzel, who had 10 points and 5 rebounds in Monday’s season-ending loss to Highland Park in the Wheeling Class 4A regional. “We had the same amount of wins but I feel we improved and played harder.

“Me and the rest of the juniors have to get better. I have to put on some weight.”

That was one of the first things Motzel mentioned to Bowen outside the Wheeling gym after the game. Motzel will be the only returning starter from a 10-18 team that was 3-12 in games decided by 7 points or less.

But the Corsairs beat Barrington, Vernon Hills, Notre Dame and St. Viator and lost in overtime at St. Patrick in their East Suburban Catholic Conference finale.

“When I reflect back on other places, it felt like it took a little longer,” Bowen said. “The stretch of games we put together the last month is exactly where we want our basketball program to be.

“The way we played and with the intensity on defense and offense is what we want our program to look like.

“And with our younger teams, it really looks like it’s taking the shape of what we want. I’m very, very excited about this.”

Carmel will have to replace senior guard and scoring leader Tim Hendricks. Senior forward Dan Mooney also helped fuel the late-season surge.

“(Hendricks) plays hard every night and it’s been an honor to play with him all year,” Motzel said.

“I don’t know where we’d be now if it wasn’t for (Hendricks),” Bowen said. “The last month (Mooney) has done a great job of changing his play and he adjusted well.”

Now Carmel will start working toward its first winning season since 1991-92 when it was 19-9 under Scott Rosberg.

“It’s looking up,” Motzel said. “I can definitely see him taking us to some winning seasons. But we have to work hard, too.”

Eight is enough to decide ESCC?: Member schools of the East Suburban Catholic Conference voted to reduce the boys basketball league schedule from 12 games to eight for next season.

The ESCC dropped from 10 teams to nine for boys sports when St. Joseph left after last season for the Chicago Catholic League. It has long had an imbalanced schedule where schools faced some opponents once and others twice.

“Some teams felt the imbalance of who they were playing twice was a problem,” said Viator athletic Director Tim Carlson, whose school was opposed to the reduction plan. “Did it determine a true champion if it was imbalanced? I can’t say if it did or it didn’t.

“The Big Ten has an imbalanced schedule. All the years we played St. Joseph and St. Pat’s and Notre Dame twice a year, nobody thought anything of it.”

Now Carlson and Joe Majkowski, the dean of ESCC coaches in his 24th year, have to find four additional nonconference games for next season. Carlson doesn’t want to play ESCC teams in nonconference games and did not support a double round-robin, 16-team league schedule, which would have left only two open dates for nonconference opponents.

“We’ll find some teams that will be beneficial for us … and we still need to play some local teams,” Carlson said.

Carlson also said the loss of St. Joseph to a nine-team league “changed the way we do business.” The result in football is every team has a different open week to find a nonconference game — which is Week 6 for Viator next season.

A different season for Waukegan: There figured to be a drop-off for Waukegan after Jereme Richmond graduated and moved on to play at Illinois.

On the surface, a 12-12 record going into tonight’s regional final at Mundelein looks like a pretty steep fall from teams that won consecutive state trophies.

But losing to Warren, Morton, Lockport, Curie, Lyons and Marshall and beating Rockford Auburn, in addition to the Bulldogs’ Central Suburban South schedule, is no way to pad a record.

“I hope so,” Waukegan coach Ron Ashlaw said when asked if there would be a payoff for the rugged tests. “Schaumburg won (Tuesday) and you look at the list of who they played and it’s quite an array of teams. What they did that we didn’t do was beat some of those people.

“We did win at Maine South, New Trier and Evanston so we are battle-tested and have been successful to a degree.”

And Ashlaw joked about Waukegan’s summer-long familiarity with Mundelein.

“It will be a little more of this (tonight) than it was (against Prospect),” Ashlaw said as he moved his hand in an end-to-end motion. “You have to be able to play multiple styles successfully.

“We were down in the trenches (Wednesday) but you need to be able to run past people and execute the entire 84 feet.”

Full Nelson: Lincoln senior Jordan Nelson, who is the second-most prolific career 3-point shooter in state history, torched downstate Morton early in the season for 37 points in an 80-52 win.

But in Tuesday night’s Lincoln 3A regional rematch, the top-seeded hosts barely exceeded Nelson’s first-game total and were knocked out in a 48-39 loss. Nelson didn’t score until late in the fourth quarter, finished with just 5 points of his 21.5 average and hit the final 3 of his career.

Nelson finished behind Washington’s Matt Roth (464 from 2004-08) for most career 3s. Roth and Canton’s Kevin Rhodes, No. 3 on the list with 371 from 1987-91, both played in the Mid-Illini Conference with Morton.

Fourth-seed Morton was hardly a surprise at 22-7 but did have to rally from an 18-point, second-half deficit in Monday’s regional opener to beat Springfield in overtime. Lincoln finished 25-6.

Super move to Waukegan: The renowned “Dog Pound” at Waukegan isn’t hosting a sectional this year but it won’t be devoid of March Madness. The school will host the 4A supersectional between the Barrington and New Trier sectional champions March 15.

Boys basketball

North Suburban all-conference selections

Grant — Jared Helmich (Jr. F), Jerry Gaylor (Jr., F)

Lake Forest — Thomas Durrett (Jr., G)

Lake Zurich — Mirko Grcic (Jr., F)

Lakes — Tanner Blain (Jr., G)

Libertyville — Ryan Barth (Sr., G)

Mundelein — Ryan Sawvell (Sr., F), Robert Knar (So., G)

North Chicago — Marzhon Bryant (Jr., G), Aaron Simpson (Jr., G), Maurice Gordon (Sr., G)

Round Lake — Juddon Carter (Jr., G)

Stevenson — Mike Fleming (Jr., G), Ryan Chapman (Sr., G)

Vernon Hills — DaVaris Daniels (Sr., G), Chris Argianas (Sr., G)

Warren — Darius Paul (Jr., F), Jeremiah Jackson (Sr., F), Nathan Boothe (Jr., F)

Zion-Benton — Milik Yarbrough (Fr., F), Owen Worthington (Sr., F), Dondre Osborne (Sr., G)

Honorable mention

Kellen Kay (Antioch, Sr., F), Vic Muntu (Grant, Sr., G), Carter Bass (Lake Forest, So., F), Drake Orser (Lake Zurich, Sr., C), Ellis Matthews (Libertyville, Jr., G), Leavon Head (Mundelein, Sr., G), Nick Lange (Round Lake, Sr., F), Brandon Ferguson (Warren, Sr., G), JoVaughn Gaines (Warren, Jr., G), Kyle Ryan (Wauconda, Jr., G), Carlyss Jackson (Zion-Benton, Sr., C)