Marian Catholic 52, Lions 42 on December 17

The Lions needed three quarters to reach that total against Marian Catholic in Chicago Heights three nights later. That can happen when a team manages just one bucket in the second period and shoots 8-for-36 through three quarters.

That’s 22 percent if you’re keeping track, and it’s how a team finds itself facing a 48-26 deficit through three.

The fourth quarter was like a different game. Karon Shavers nailed two three-pointers and another bucket for eight straight points. Dontae Bell made four free throws. Jamarion Upshaw scored on a putback. All of a sudden it was a 10-point game with just over two minutes remaining and the Spartans were holding on, going to a delay game.

But hold on they did, improving to 8-2 with a 52-42 victory.

“We waited too long to get started,” Coach Jimalle Ridley said after the Lions fell to 3-5. “If we’d played the first three quarters the way we played the fourth, we”d have given ourselves a shot.”

Speaking of shots, the Lions were without their best outside shooter, junior Ethan Jackson, who missed the game with strep throat. Leo actually led 12-9 after one, but Marian opened the second quarter with a 14-2 run and gradually built its lead to 22 points before the Lions came to life in the final period.

Shavers scored eight of his team-high 13 points in the fourth and Bell, despite foul trouble, had nine of his 11 in the second half. Asa Harris gave Leo three double-figures scorers with 10 points.

The Leo student section had some fun with Zack Sharkey, a pale-faced gym rat, but Marian’s senior guard had the last laugh with 21 points, three steals, a block and a solid floor game. Delan Davis scored 11 for the Spartans.

Leo’s frosh-soph let a 12-point second-half lead slip away and dropped a 64-56 decision to Marian in the preliminary game.

Leo will open play in the IC Catholic/Westmont Holiday Tournament against Westmont (3-4) at Westmont at 6 p.m. on Monday, December 23.

Lions 62, Christ the King 50 on Dec. 14

By Dan McGrath

The Leo Lions learned some things about themselves in Saturday’s nonconference matinee with Christ the King at Leo.

Namely, that they can hang with a quality team.

The Gladiators were 6-2 coming in, undefeated leaders of the Chicagoland Christian Conference, averaging 80 points a game, tall, rangy and deep and looking the part of a Class 2-state title contender.

The Lions were 2-4, riding a dispiriting losing streak that reached three in a 71-53 trimming at Brother Rice a night earlier.

So they held CK without a bucket for the game’s first seven minutes, raced out to a 26-9 first-quarter lead and withstood everything the Gladiators threw at them for a satisfying 62-50 victory.

Never underestimate the power of a distraction.

CK Coach Troy Caldwell spent the game in Leo Athletic Director Noah Cannon’s office. He’d been ejected from the gym for coming out of the stands to confront an official during the frosh-soph game. Under IHSA rules, a coach who’s ejected from a game must sit out the following game as well.

Informed of this, Caldwell threatened to pull his team off the floor if the official he had confronted worked the varsity game, as scheduled. Reached by telephone, the Catholic League Supervisor of Officials declared that the game would go into the books as a forfeit if CK declined to play. Whereupon Caldwell relented and the game went on, but the Gladiators never got closer than nine points back after Leo’s dynamic first quarter.

Not that they didn’t try. Their 1-2-2 press forced 18 turnovers, and the impressively athletic Aaron McClure anchored a front line that discouraged Leo from getting anything going at the rim.

But the Lions countered with effective defense of their own, swarming McClure every time he got the ball. CK didn’t have the outside firepower to offset the tactic, hitting only two three-pointers, both by Christian Burford, who scored 14 of his game-high18 points in the second half.

Leo got 16 from junior Brian Kizer and 10 from junior Ethan Jackson. Newly eligible Jamarion Upshaw contributed big minutes in relief of injured Stephen Barze, combining with Neil Anderson for 16 points, 12 rebounds and four blocks as the Lions held their own with the long and lean Gladiators underneath. They scored 12 of their 16 final-period points at the free-throw line, content to play ball control with a double-digit lead.

Quite the contrast from Friday, when Brother Rice (7-0 overall, 2-0 Catholic League Blue) unleashed a fusillade of three-pointers to seize an early lead and then build on it. Marcos Gonzalez (22 points), K.J. Morris (14) and Jack Wiegus (14) combined for 50 points. Leo got 14 from Dontae Bell and 12 from Karon Shavers.

The Lions hit the road Tuesday, traveling to Chicago Heights to face Marian Catholic (6-1) in a nonconference game. University High (1-4) comes to Leo on Friday.

St. Laurence 65, Lions 39 on December 10

By Dan McGrath

For as hard as they played in Tuesday night’s Catholic League skirmish with St. Laurence, the Leo Lions didn’t really deserve a 26-point thumping.

But when the shots don’t fall – at all – a team runs the risk of being run out of its own gym, and that’s basically what happened. 

A 15-12 first-quarter vanished as Leo was going scoreless during the first 4 ½ minutes of the second. The Vikings (4-2, 2-0 Catholic League) used a 16-4 run to take control and never relinquished it, racing off to a 65-39 victory.

The Lions (2-3, 0-2) were equal-opportunity errant, missing three-pointers, mid-range jumpers, layups and putbacks. They did not have a double-figures scorer and managed just 16 points in the second half.

St. Laurence – long, strong and active at both ends – had a hand in Leo’s struggles, challenging everything and rebounding with a tenacity the undersized Lions simply couldn’t match. Senior Stephen Barze certainly tried, taking down 11 rebounds to go with eight points. But all too often he was going it alone against a Viking front line of long-armed leapers. 

They were equally effective on the offensive end as Zerrick Johnson hustled his way to 19 points and Reggie Stevens feathered in four three-pointers on his way to 14. E.J. Mosley orchestrated all of it, complementing an effortlessly smooth floor game with 16 points.

Karon Shavers had a team-high nine points for Leo and Asa Harris matched Barze with eight.

Things don’t get any easier for the Lions this weekend – they’re at Brother Rice (6-0, 1-0) on Friday before returning to the Lions Den for a nonconference game with Christ the King (5-2) on Saturday. 

De La Salle 64 Lions 46 on Dec. 6

By Dan McGrath No offense to previous opponents CVS, 21st Century Charter or Bogan, but the Leo Lions played a big-boy team in their Catholic League opener at De La Salle on Friday. Much of the preseason speculation has centered on DePaul Prep, Mount Carmel and Brother Rice as contenders for the Catholic League title and beyond, but those who would sleep on the Meteors (4-1, 1-0) do so at their peril. Their size, strength and defensive tenacity were too much for the Lions, resulting in a 64-46 romp in which the hosts were never really threatened. Before the game, De La Salle named its court for the late Jerry Tokarz, its longtime coach who concluded his Hall of Fame career with a brief stint at Leo. Tokarz made his bones at De La Salle, winning more than 400 games and eight Catholic League titles while making three trips to the state tournament. More than a dozen Tokarz family members and close to 50 former DLS players were on hand for the classy ceremony. Then the game started, and De La Salle scored the first nine points while Leo was missing nine of its first 10 shots and committing six turnovers. It was 22-4 after a quarter, and the Lions would get no closer than nine the rest of the way. Utilizing a fullcourt press, a halfcourt trap and straight-up man-to-man defense, the Meteors imposed their will on the proceedings and kept Leo from getting anything going near the rim. An occasional three-pointer by Ethan Jackson (10 points), Dontae Bell (10 points) or Brian Kizer (nine points) was pretty much the extent of the Lions’ offense – they missed a half-dozen open layups. Plus they looked like wispy Ethiopian distance runners next to the Meteors’ lineup of brawny weightroom devotees. De La Salle got 18 points from clever left-hander Charles Barnes, 12 from Remi Edwards and 10 from Roosevelt Thomas. Given the resolve and success with which the Meteors attacked the offensive glass, their best offense was often a missed shot. It was a rough night in Bridgeport for the Lions, as their sophomore and freshman teams lost by a combined 10 points. They have three games in the week ahead: St. Laurence at home on Tuesday, December 10; at Brother Rice on Friday,  December 13, and Christ the King in a nonconference exercise at Leo on Saturday, December 14.

Leo 74 Bogan 49 on Dec. 2

Leo home games are live streamed at: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeoCatholicHighSchoolsSportsChannel No registration needed.

By Dan McGrath

Facing Bogan on Monday in the rubber match of a three-game nonconference set to open the season, the Leo Lions figured to land somewhere in the middle of the 53-point beatdown they put on Chicago Vocational on November 27 and the 27-point drubbing they took from 21st Century Charter three days later. They did, handling the Bengals 74-49 with guard Ethan Jackson taking center stage before another good crowd at the Lions Den. Jackson, a smooth-shooting left-handed junior, scored Leo’s first 12 points of the night and 21 in the first half, staking the Lions to a 33-19 lead at the break. Then, after some careless play by the hosts helped Bogan get within five, Jackson’s nine points fueled a 17-2 Leo run that broke the game open. Jackson finished with a game-high 32 points, including six three-pointers. Sophomore Brian Kizer scored 16 of his 18 points in the second half of a foul-a-thon that took nearly two hours to play thanks to a three-man officiating crew that seemed to believe they were being paid by the call – Dontae Bell, Leo’s leading scorer, played less than six minutes because of foul trouble. With whistles blowing so frequently, the game lacked any sense of flow or rhythm. Which may have been how Bogan wanted it, as its offense pretty much consisted of four guys watching Devin Nagle dribble his way into impossible shots. Nagle scored 17 points, but shot often enough to get 50. Teammate Danny Fasile added 15, 11 in the second half. Leo improved to 2-1, while Bogan slipped to 0-4, its days as a Public League powerhouse receding further into memory. It was a clean sweep for the Lions – the sophomore team (2-2) prevailed 53-33 in the preliminary game. Leo opens Catholic League play at De La Salle (3-1) on Friday, Dec. 6.

2024-25 Leo Lions Basketball Schedule

Leo home games are live streamed at https://www.youtube.com/c/LeoCatholicHighSchoolsSportsChannel

No registration needed.

2024-2025 LEO BASKETBALL SCHEDULE

December 23
at Immaculate Conception/Westmont Christmas Classic
vs. Westmont H.S.
6 p.m.
Westmont High School
909 Oakwood Drive
Westmont, IL 60559

December 26
at Immaculate Conception/Westmont Christmas Classic
vs. South Shore Prep
6 p.m.
Westmont High School
909 Oakwood Drive
Westmont, IL 60559

December 28
at Immaculate Conception/Westmont Christmas Classic
vs. TBA
Time TBA
Westmont High School
909 Oakwood Drive
Westmont, IL 60559

December 30
at Immaculate Conception Christmas Classic
Time TBA
Immaculate Conception College Prep
217 S. Cottage Hill Ave.
Elmhurst, IL 60126

January 4, 2025
at Hyde Park Classic
Time TBA
Hyde Park Academy
6220 S. Stony Island Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637

January 7
vs. St. Rita
7 p.m.

January 9
at St. Francis High School
7 p.m.
2130 Roosevelt Rd.
Wheaton, IL 60187

January 14
vs. Marmion Academy
7 p.m.

January 18
at Northridge Prep MLK Shootout
3 p.m.
Timothy Christian High School
1061 S. Prospect Ave.
Elmhurst, IL 60126

January 19
at Chelby Frazier Shootout
TBA
Thornwood High School
17101 South Park Ave.
South Holland, IL 60473

January 21
at Aurora Central Catholic
7 p.m.
1255 N. Edgelawn Dr.
Aurora, IL 60506

January 24
at Fenwick
7 p.m.
505 Washington Blvd.
Oak Park, IL 60302

January 26
at Breast Cancer Shootout
TBA
Rich Township High School
20550 S. Cicero Ave.
Matteson, IL 60443

January 28
vs. Providence St. Mel
7 p.m.

January 31
vs. De Paul Prep
7 p.m.

February 4
at St. Francis de Sales
7 p.m.
10155 S. Ewing Ave.
Chicago, IL 60617

February 7
vs. Loyola Academy
7 p.m.

February 11
at Mount Carmel
7 p.m.
6410 S. Dante Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637

February 14
vs. St. Ignatius
7 p.m.

Leo 75 CVS 22 on Nov. 27