Boys Basketball

January 20, 2007

Lane Tech Falls Further Into the Abyss

Foreman 61

Lane Tech 59

• Loss to Foreman has Lane in dead last in the conference with an 0-5 conference record. Lane now in grave danger of dropping to the North if it finishes last in the conference.

Starting out the season, Lane had hopes of winning the Red-North conference. After all, consistent Red-North champion Von Steuben graduated their top two players and the Red-North seemed ripe for taking. One of Von Steubens graduated players is Jeremie Simmons,  one of the top players in the Public League in 2006 and now plays for Michigan based Mott Community college the number one ranked pre-season Junior College in the country. Simmons is the leading scorer for the team (18.3 ppg) and undoubtedly be offered a Division I scholarship. Then, Von Steuben got boosted by the transfer of junior guard Mike Dinnuno from Lake Park and has been a a roll all season and is currently ranked one of the top 20 teams in the Chicago area.

    What Lane Tech did not expect this season was the play of the other Red-North counterparts aside from Von Steuben. Foreman upset Von Steuben last week to actually take the lead in conference play. Then Senn has emerged as another force in Red-North and was undefeated in conference play until they lost to Von Steuben this week 71 - 56. Finally, to make matters Lane lost consecutive Red-North conference games last week to Lakeview 62-58 and then to Taft 65-59 to put Lane in last place. Meanwhile Taft had a big 55-39 victory over Lakeview to give them a comfortable 2 game cushion over Lane for last place So this game versus Foreman was big. Lane had to win in order to prevent digging themselves deeper into last place. But Lane just did not have enough as Foreman crippled Lane Tech 61 to 59 Lane's biggest chance to prevent finishing in last place in the Red-North is to win 2 of their remaining conference games and then pray that Lakeview loses all it's remaining conference games.

    Lane plays Senn next at Senn this Saturday January 20, 2007.

Red-North Conference Boys Basketball Standings as of January 19, 2007 (team that finishes in last place goes to the Blue-North Conference in 2007-08 season; each team plays 10 conference games)

Lavonte Dority and the Foreman Hornets handed Lane another Red-North loss (www.illinoishsbasketball photo)