With tryouts in the books, boys basketball is now in full swing. There are two freshman teams, a sophomore team, JV and varsity.

With all of the teams set, the regular season is about to start. The team went 17-10 last year during Coach Furman’s 8th year as head coach.

The varsity team lost three of their best players Tyler Ingebritsen, Daniel Hadler and Eric Pillath. Those are some big shoes to fill considering each of them were over 6’3, but Furman is excited about this new group of seniors.

Furman said that he relied on those guys. “My expectations really rely on our players.” He is looking for hard work and individual ability.

“Put everything together and put our best effort on the floor, then everything should fall into place. It’s more about effort and execution, and what we are doing as a team,” Furman said. Wins and losses will take care of themselves.

With Joey Gatziolis, Brad Hubly, Tyree Howard, Justin Wingba and Kyle Zuba back, Furman thinks he will have a pretty good core this year.

“Those guys will step in and fill in those minutes of the guys we lost,” Furman said.

He also added that Stefan Pantovic and Nico Collazo are up and coming juniors. He said that they will be a team that has a lot of dribble penetration, that will shoot the ball a lot and will not be a “back to the basket” team.

“We have five guys that can handle the ball,” he said.

Joey Gatziolis and Brad Hubly both played on varsity last year as juniors. Hubly doesn’t plan to continue playing basketball in college, but “I do have the opportunity right now at a Division Three school, but I don’t want to at this time.”

About Joey Gatziolis’ college playing aspirations, he said, “I’m not sure if I’m going to because I might play football, but I will play one or the other.”

“The best feeling in the game is winning,” Hubly said.

Gatziolis said, “The best feeling is easily making a clutch shot. There’s nothing like knowing you put the fate of the team on your back and didn’t let them down.”

With the regular season approaching and practices in full force, the Grens are ready to take on the Mid-Suburban League. They start off the season in a tournament in Mundelein on November 23.

Furman said that in his years of coaching, he’s learned that it takes a lot of skill to win a varsity game.

Key skills are good rebounding, team defense and sharing the ball. If that is in full effect, then the school should be looking at a pretty good boys basketball team this year.