Boys Basketball: Lake Forest takes down Niles West

Updated: November 23, 2011 10:16PM

Lake Forest improved to 2-0 in the 38th annual Billy Schnurr Basketball Tournament by dominating the host Niles West Wolves 58-43 here Wednesday night.

The six-team event will continue on Friday with the Scouts facing Glenbrook North (2-0) at 3:30 and Niles West (1-1) playing Hales Franciscan at 5.

Hales crushed Kelly from Chicago 85-23 on Wednesday in a game that featured a running clock for the entire second half. It was 59-11 at halftime. Glenbrook North beat Hersey 67-39.

Thomas Durrett led Lake Forest against Niles with 19 points, but the player of the game was his teammate, point guard John Hayes. He had 13 points, 10 assists and 5 steals.

“John has come a long way. He’s been doing a great job handling the ball,” said Scouts coach Phil LaScala. “He’s really matured. He had an unbelievable end of the season last year which really helped his confidence, and he’s been playing with that confidence ever since.

“We’re going to ride that. He’s a big key to our team. How he goes, we go.”

Niles West led 9-5 early, but Lake Forest went on an 11-0 run to finish the first quarter and was in command the rest of the way. Durrett had nine of the 11 points in that rally.

Niles West was led in scoring by Joe Wounan with 11 points. He was 3-for-6 from behind the arc and Niles was 8-of-16 from 3-point range.

Lake Forest was 26-of-48 shooting in the game, with many buckets coming from point-blank range.

“Our focus is our defense,” said Hayes. “We’ve held our first two opponents under 45 points. Anytime you can do that, you put yourself in position to win.

“Offensively, we’ve been doing a good job of passing up good shots for great shots. Being unselfish is a big part of our game.”

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