Streaking Lions Basketball Grabs Third Straight

Yet another team performance from the boys basketball team saw the squad pull off its third straight win with a 63-41 home triumph over conference rival York.

The Lions move to 6-1 (2-0) in 2010 after claiming their second West Suburban Silver Conference success in as many tries.

"I was happiest with our start to the second half," Lyons head Coach Tom Sloan said. "It was a back and forth slugfest in the first half, and I liked how [senior forward] Nick Burt decided to get to the basket, which changed the way we were able to move the ball on offense and changed how the game was flowing."

Coming out of halftime with a 29-24 lead, LTHS jumped off to a 17-3 run after six and a half minutes to seal the Dukes' fate early in the second half.

The aforementioned Burt—who was among Lyons' top scorers with 13 points and 11 rebounds—stressed the significance of the Lions fourth home win in five home games.

"It's just another a conference win, and no matter what team we play in the conference, they're all worth one more win," Burt said. "We all know that whether it's the beginning of the season or end of the season, they all matter just as much so we can't let up at all."

Burt also noted flexibility as a key factor that augmented success Friday night.

"I think we made some good adjustments finding some mismatches and finding things that were open," Burt said. "I think we started a little bit slow but in the second half we saw some openings and did a good job executing what we wanted to do."

Lyons was led by Burt's double-double along with senior guard Nick Zeisloft's 15 points. Seniors Spencer Mahoney and Henry Wilson added eight points apiece for the Lions.

Ahead of the La Grange-based program's tough road clash with basketball power Downers Grove South Saturday evening, Zeisloft outlined what the team must do to perform against the mighty Mustangs.

"We have to make sure we don't have any letdowns, "Zeisloft said. "We don't want to have a loss of intensity from tonight carrying over to tomorrow. We need a good start with better intensity in the first half and the same second half that we had tonight."

Sloan agreed that improvements must be made in order to compete with Downers Grove

"We have to be tougher with the ball, and we talked about that during halftime [tonight]," Sloan said. "It's the same message that we give the kids every game; we're going to have to look at teams' strengths and weaknesses, and force them to either their weaknesses or keep them from their strengths."

On a broader scope, Zeisloft expressed his thoughts on the team's start to the 2010-2011 season.

"Through seven games, we still have a lot to work on," Zeisloft said. "We aren't there yet, we have to keep working hard in practice and hopefully we'll reach our potential when it matters most."