 |
Lane Tech Fan * |
|
|||||
| * Click on the Lane Tech Fan at the Upper Left Hand corner for the Blog! | |||||||
| |||||||||||
|
Boys Basketball March 2, 2007 Lane Tech vs. Loyola Academy Game Preview
Who: Lane Tech (#7 seed) vs Loyola Academy(#1 seed) What: IHSA regional final game; the winner plays the winner of the Northside Prep Regional winner of Senn or New Trier
Where: Friday, March 2, 2007 at Loyola Academy,
1100 Laramie Avenue Special Information: Pre-sale tickets for Friday night's Regional final between Loyola Academy & Lane Tech will be available at Loyola for $4.00 today until 3PM and all day Friday starting at 9AM. Game time Friday night is 7:30 PM .
Projected Starting Lineups
Lane Tech John Holzman (sr) G 6-0" Bryan Hill (sr) G 6'0" Shelton Jackson (sr) F 6'3" Chris Harris (sr) F 6'0" Lalo Bellamy (sr) C 6'7"
Loyola Jeffrey Jordan (sr) G 6'-2" Marcus Jordan (so) G 6'-2" Matt Suhey(sr) F 6'-3" Rob Belcore (jr) F 6'-5" Peter Sullivan(sr) C 6'-6"
Thoughts on Lane Tech Lane Tech has had an up an down season. The team started out the season playing it's own Thanksgiving tournament where it had wins vs. Taft and Brooks but had losses to talented teams from Oak Park, Evanston, and Zion Bento. In December, Lane played as a new participant in the Luther North Holiday tournament where they placed 5th with a 3-1 record. Their only loss was to south suburban power Stagg. Conference play was really rough for Lane this year where they barely finished out of the cellar with a 2-8 record. All together they were 0-6 vs the top Von Steuben, Senn, and Foreman- the top dogs of the conference. However, after conference play, Lane has picked up their game and advanced all the way to the Consolation finals of the Public League where they finally fell to Carver. Lane is fresh off a 51-35 victory over Foreman in last Wednesday Regional semi-final. What makes that game even more surprising was they did it without three players who saw a good amount of playing time earlier in the season: Cortez Delaney; Ezekiel Hernandez, and Cameron Hill. Lane is peaking at the right time.
Thoughts on Loyola Academy Loyola is the highest profile team next to Simeon in the state of Illinois. Much of that has to do with their gaudy ranking (top 5 team in the state of Illinois all year, and undefeated vs Illinois teams) but much of it also has to do with two famous brothers on their team. They are Sophomore Marcus Jordan and Senior Jeffrey Jordan, the sons of Michael Jordan. Jeffrey starts as point guard for Loyola and is considered a mid major college prospect. Marcus usually comes off the bench and is considered one of the top 2 or 3 players in Illinois for the class of 2009. But Loyola is much more than the Jordans. They also have star junior forward Rob Belcore who is being looked at by Division I colleges and very physical Joe Suhey, who will play football for Penn State next year. Loyola biggest wins this year was against Stevenson for the Wheeling Holiday Tournament championship, New Trier, De LaSalle (twice), Fenwick, and Warren.
The game Loyola will absolutely bring it's crazy student section and fans so the place will be dominated with Loyola fans. Lane Tech may find the atmosphere very intimidating because they have not played in too many games this year with the type of atmosphere that will be there Friday. Lane will see a steady diet of usually precise outside shooting from Belcore and company. Inside Lane center Lalo Bellamy must be able to handle the driving from the Jordans and have to be able to out muscle a very physical inside game from Suhey and Sullivan. The key for Lane will be to use their quickness and defense to create turnover and convert their fast break opportunities. Then, they have to shoot very well outside to keep the score close. Lane must play close to perfect game just to stay close with Loyola. Lane has shown signs the last couple weeks of playing close to the top of their game. If Lane plays a solid game, they could keep the game close and make the game interesting.
|
