By Jim Dresbach
BETHESDA, MD - The Georgetown Prep basketball arena crowd continued to grow during the second half of Saturday night's Landon Bear-Georgetown Prep Hoya contest. And so did the Landon lead.

In an atmosphere filled with verbal bantering between student cheering sections, Division One recruits and some rivalry-induced tussles and tumbles, the visiting Bears methodically turned a two-point halftime lead into a comfortable 15-point advantage half way through the fourth quarter and eventually posted a 67-54 win over a Taylor Abt-less Hoya squad.

Landon guard Joe McDonald, who is currently being recruited by Boston College and the University of Virginia among others, paced the Bears with 22 points - with a dozen of those points coming during Landon's 24-point fourth quarter, and UVA-bound Darion Atkins missed a triple-double by two blocks as the Bear power forward scored 16 points, hauled down 12 rebounds and blocked eight Prep shots.

"It was close to (our best team game)," Landon coach Andy Luther said after his team moved to13-3 overall and 3-0 in IAC play. "We were really looking for each other tonight. Everybody was kind of hunting for that second or third pass - that was a goal of ours tonight - by doing that, it just kind of gave us a lot of wide-open shots, and in the second half, we got the interior looks we wanted."

Without Abt, who was sidelined Saturday with a virus, Prep coach Herb Krusen shuffled his lineup and the Hoyas were called on to change their typical roles. Prep big man Mike Boland led the Hoyas with 19 points, but Abt's minutes and scoring were missed.

"He (Abt) usually gets 15 shots, and with him not there, Mike Boland has to take a different role, and it kind of changes the team, but I thought our guys handled it very well," Krusen said. "I thought they played great for two and a half, three quarters. McDonald got going, our substitutions were limited and I thought they wore us down."

After eight lead changes in the first half in front of the standing-room only crowd, Atkins gave the Bears a lead they would never relinquish at 29-27 with a slam dunk with six seconds to play in the first half. Atkins scored eight of Landon's 16 second quarter points while Chris Hudnut and McDonald combined to drop in all 13 Bear points in the opening quarter.

The Bears then outscored Prep 38 to 27 in the second half. The Landon lead reached double digits with five minutes and 43 seconds to play when McDonald skied for an offensive rebound and followed with a put-back field goal and the Bear lead expanded to 15 a minute and a half later courtesy of hoops by Hudnut, who finished with 15 points.

"They have a shot-blocker (Atkins) who can erase a lot of mistakes and a guard (McDonald) who is as good as any guard in the metropolitan area; he can just pull up on a dime," Krusen said of Landon's Division One recruits. "They have a lot of guys who know how to play. They are very good."

The Hoyas also received solid second quarter scoring from point guard JT Strickland who penetrated the Bear defense for driving lay-ups, a three-point field goal and nine of his 12 points right before halftime. Prep senior guards Denny McCarthy and Jeff Hale combined to drain three three-pointers in the first quarter to keep the early score tight.