Battling Buffalo Grove squad not throwing in towel
by tim froehlig Contributor January 14, 2012 10:28PM
Buffalo Grove's Rich Zirngibl dishes off a pass around Hersey's Sean Reszotko during Saturday's league game. | Jerry Daliege~for Sun-Times Media
Article Extras
Updated: February 20, 2012 8:17AM
As the old saying goes, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.
Granted, it hasn’t been the brightest of seasons at times for Buffalo Grove’s boys basketball team, on paper.
But despite this inescapable fact, the Bison continue to battle hard and work on improving night in and night out. And there are plenty of signs of positive things ahead.
Sure, Buffalo Grove (5-12 overall, 1-4 Mid-Suburban League East) dropped a pair of games the past week falling 62-47 at Hersey (7-9) and 57-33 to powerful New Trier (15-2) on the road.
But it’s that exact kind of adversity that continues to motivate the Bison.
“Being the underdog in a lot of our games definitely gives us something to prove,” said BG coach Ryan O’Connor. “In a game against a team like New Trier, one of the top teams in the state, we just have to go out and have fun — there’s no pressure. And that’s why you play the games. Anything can happen. New Trier is a good team because they do a lot of specific things extremely well. They run a lot of 1-3-1 zone, so you have to attack them from all sorts of different angles.”
Against Hersey, the Bison proved there was no quit in them. Buffalo Grove rallied from an awful start — and a 10-point deficit just two minutes into the game — to claw its way back and take a 42-21 lead into the fourth quarter, before struggling to score down the stretch.
Junior guard Luke Potnick had a game-high 16 points, and shot 5-for-9 from the field during the first three quarters.
“I’m just trying to be aggressive out there and keep working really hard,” Potnick said. “And it gives us extra motivation knowing a lot of people don’t expect us to win most nights. That’s really keeps us going, and we just try to do our best and have fun out there.”
Senior forward/center Sam Wacker (9 points), sophomore Andrew Apel (6 points) and seniors Rich Zirngibl and Alex Fritz (8 points each) were the other four starters. Each one of them played an extremely aggressive style on defense against the Huskies, resulting in Hersey shooting just 33 percent from the field (20-for-60) the entire night.
“All of our guys are trying really hard,” said Wacker, who also had eight rebounds against Hersey. “We’re a smaller team, so we just have to keep working on our transition game, and if we are persistent defensively, we will be in a lot of games. As coach (O’Connor) always talks about, our main focus is to be playing our best basketball at the end of the season. We’re doing a lot of things right out there, but we just have to work on finishing our games stronger.”
The Bison will play seven of their final nine regular season games on the road, beginning at MSL foe Wheeling on Saturday. To its credit, it doesn’t seem to intimidate BG one bit.
“I know this may sound strange, given our overall record, but playing on the road hasn’t seemed to have a negative effect on us all season,” O’Connor said. “You’d think with as much as we’ve struggled to win games at times, that it might be tougher for us away from home, but I haven’t seen any signs of that. We’ve done equally well at home and on the road.”
Comments Click here to view or make a comment