FH Northern, Worst get best of Rockford
By Kelly Hill / The Grand Rapids Press

GRAND RAPIDS -- A transition game engineered by senior point guard Danny Greenan, a half-court game anchored by senior center Pedja Lazic and the offensive creativity of senior forward Travis Worst gave Forest Hills Northern a 71-60 victory over visiting Rockford Monday night.

The Huskies rebounded from a 3-point loss to Forest Hills Central on Friday night and improved their O-K Red Metro record to 4-2 and overall record to 8-2.

FHN, which is scheduled to host South Christian tonight, broke open Monday night's game with a 12-2 run in the third quarter that gave the Huskies a 13-point lead. That lead remained double digits for the remainder of the contest.

"This is an enormous conference win for us. I thought we played well the whole game, but Rockford made a couple of threes in the first half that they didn't make in the third quarter," said FHN coach Steve Harvey. "We had a few fast-break opportunities and some good looks in the first half and some we made and some we didn't. We made most of those in the third quarter."

FHN takes command The Huskies grabbed a 14-7 lead in the game's first six minutes, but Rams Zach VanSetters, Mark Russell and Ryan DeHaan hit consecutive 3-pointers in the final two minutes of the first quarter to give Rockford a 16-14 lead at the end of the period.

Rockford led 23-21 with just less than five minutes remaining in the first half, but FHN scored six unanswered points to take a lead it would never relinquish. " It's a game of streaks and we gave up too many easy baskets," Rockford coach Steve Majerle said. "We are trying to look at the glass as half full. Friday night (against Jenison) we didn't play the way that we should, but we made some improvements tonight. We can work with what we saw tonight."

What the Rams saw was what Majerle called FHN's best performance of the season. " Northern is very good, but this was probably the best I have seen them play," Majerle said.

Worst led the Huskies with 27 points, five rebounds and three assists. Lazic had 15 points for the Huskies and Greenan finished with eight points and six assists. " We tried to take advantage inside, with Pedja, and I think we were effective doing that," Harvey said. "With Greenan we were also able to do some things in transition in the second half. We got more off their pressure than we gave up. " Travis is amazing. He does it in so many ways."

Rockford is idle tonight but is scheduled to resume conference play at Hudsonville Friday night.