When two rivals faced off inside of the Michelle Obama Athletic Complex, at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School on Jan. 7, it was an unexpected performance that led to Lane taking a lead into the first half.
Senior guard Brayden Rosenkrantz has been a rotational piece since his sophomore year, but his senior season has seen an uptick in his role.
“My goal is, make the team better, and if I’m hitting shots, I’m gonna keep shooting the ball,” Rosenkrantz said.
Rosenkrantz has been forced to play a bigger role than he normally has this season, as Lane’s duo of Dalton Scantlebury and Zach Mazanowski were both subbed out early in the first quarter. Lane went ahead 18-12 going into the second quarter, but a 12-5 run by Young erased the lead Lane had built up from the first.
As the half neared its closing stages, Rosenkrantz took a confident pull-up three in the face of a Whitney Young defender. The Lane crowd erupted as the ball swished through the net, and Lane led 29-27 at the half.
Despite the play of Rosenkrantz in the first half, the Champions still looked for their top two players to step up their play in the second half. Early in the third quarter, Lane implemented a set (organized play ran while on offense) that involved Mazanowski screening Scantlebury’s deffender on Scnatelbarry’s way into the high post, which allowed Mazanowski to slip into the low post and get the ball from Scantlebury for a layup or dunk.
Once Young began to adjust, Lane countered by instead having Mazanowski receive the ball at the top of the key, which allowed for Scantlebury to seal his defender right under the basket, and subsequently score easy points. These two sets gave the Champions some stability on the offensive side of the ball and productive play from both Scantlebury and Mazanowski.
While Scantlebury began to ramp up his offensive play in the third quarter, it was his defense that had the most impact. Scantlebury was tasked with guarding Whitney Young’s top scorer, Antonio Munoz.
“Yeah. I mean, my game plan was just sort of make him shoot,” Scantlebury said, “I knew he wasn’t too comfortable with shooting, and I knew he wanted to mainly use his right hand, so I was just trying to try to force him left.”
Despite picking up two fouls early on in the game, Scantlebury was still able to have an interior impact as he finished the game with a game-high three blocks.
By limiting Munoz, Lane controlled the game in fourth quarter, getting their lead as high as eight points as Coach Nicholas Logalbo’s gameplan came to fruition.
“It’s not a secret,” Logalbo said, “We have a lot of size. We have a senior led group. We knew what we wanted to do in our ball screen coverage, and we think we did a pretty good job cutting that out. But then conversely, we wanted to turn our defense into offense and get the open floor, and we thought we did a pretty good job of that as well.”
It was Mazanowski who delivered the dagger late in the fourth, as he finished the fastbreak outlet with an and-one layup. Mazanowski, who had scored 30 points against the (at the time) top ranked Kenwood Broncos on Dec. 19, struggled from the field. Despite shooting 4-for-14, Mazanowski was able to settle things down the stretch, and was a big part in the effort to get Lane a victory against Whitney Young two years in a row.
Lane looks to build off their big rivalry win as they make a late season push before the start of city playoffs.
“We literally have the toughest strength of schedule, the state of Illinois. That’s by design, because we want to be battle tested. We want to be ready for this running conference play in January and February, to get us ready for the city and state playoffs,” Logalbo said. “I think we know we can beat anybody we are stuck on the court with.”
Lane will close the regular season with three home games, with the Jan. 28 showdown against the Simeon Wolverines being broadcasted onto the Marquee Network. Despite Lane likely being out of the running for a conference championship, the Champions can still better their playoff seeding with wins over conference opponents Lindblom (Jan. 23), Hyde Park (Jan. 30), and as before mentioned Simeon (Jan. 28). With the combination of beating their late-season conference opponents, alongside losses from those above them in the standings (Curie/Simeon), Lane could be set up for another deep postseason run as they got to the City Quarterfinals last season. If things go right for both squads, there could be a second Lane vs Young game this season, something both team’s fans would like to see.
