Boys basketball: No. 8 Palm Beach Lakes stops No. 4 Jupiter

Tuesday, November 29, 2011
by Jeff Greer

Palm Beach Lakes may be young, but the Rams didn't show any signs of youth in a 75-64 victory over Jupiter in a matchup of ranked boys basketball teams Tuesday.

Eighth-ranked Lakes (2-0) pulled away from fourth-ranked Jupiter (0-1) in the fourth quarter after the teams played neck-and-neck for the opening 24 minutes.

Bruce Harrison scored 20 points and Quinn Cole added 15, but it was Gito St. Fort's free-throw shooting (10-for-10, all in the second half) that kept Lakes in the lead despite several Jupiter rallies.

"It's a great win," Lakes coach Lorenzo Hands said. "It's a chance to let us know we're headed in the right direction. We don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves."

Lakes only has one senior (Harrison) on its roster. The Rams start two juniors, a sophomore and a freshman.

"We have to learn how to play in these situations," Hands said. "Jupiter's a very good, experienced team and they made some runs, but we executed the game plan."

Jupiter started hot but was thrown off its game plan by Lakes' up-tempo pace. Jupiter, with two players 6-foot-9 and taller, wanted to slow the game down and use its size advantage.

That didn't happen.

The Warriors struggled with transition defense and rushed some shots, coach John Andersen said.

"Their press made us rush," Andersen said. "I told our guys to run our secondary break, but if that doesn't work, go into our offense. But we rushed it and took some bad shots."

Bobby Hain scored 18 points for Jupiter, but the 6-9 wing was forced to play down low more with 6-10 center Grant Pelchen in foul trouble. Mike Edgely, who scored 17 points, provided a nice spark for the Warriors.

"We've got Leonard tomorrow and Dwyer next week," Andersen said. "I made our schedule hard to see how we would react. This will be a good film session for us."