So much for summer vacation.

Lisle’s boys basketball team just finished a whirlwind summer season that saw it play 27 games at four locations in three weeks.

The schedule made for a dizzying spree of games, but it was one necessary for a Lisle team coming off a disappointing 9-21 season.

“I think the big thing is to get the incoming juniors to play with the seniors and getting the confidence level up on the floor,” Lisle head coach Mark LaScala said. “This group has never played together before, but when the season starts the chemistry will be there.”

In dealing with the loss of two senior starters and six seniors overall, LaScala said this summer season was instrumental in cementing that chemistry as well as working on drills in preparation for the regular season.

“I think we accomplished that,” said LaScala, who noted that three days at a team camp at the University of Illinois was immensely successful. “We spent tow or three nights in the dorms together.”

The summer season was about more than wins and losses for the Lions, who are hoping a successful June can springboard them to a successful 2008-09 season.

“I think the kids are motivated to some extent by our lack of success last season,” LaScala said, referring to Lisle’s 0-6 start last November. “They don’t want to have that same kind of start. We were pretty competitive in conference at 6-5 but it wasn’t until Christmas that we had any sense of what we were doing.

“We return a lot of guys who saw game action and the question is whether they’ve improved.”

Junior point guard Marcus Wilson had a successful summer, highlighted by a scoring binge at Braidwood to close the summer, but he wasn’t alone in displaying his improvement.

Seniors Jay Osika, Lee Gorski and Cameron Wright, and junior Jon Surber, all of whom started at various times last season were part of an impressive platoon of players who stepped up at various times this summer.

“It was a different guy every night,” LaScala said. “There wasn’t one guy who you’d point to and say, ‘He had a monster summer.’”

LaScala also pointed to senior Tyler Triplett and junior Mike Bucher as players who showed improvement over the summer.

“Tyler continued to grow and improve, and Mike kind of led the sophomore team last year and is coming up varsity.”

The Lions will again open the 2008-09 season with their own Thanksgiving tournament followed by a tilt with a talented Wheaton Academy team. The unstated goal is to avoid the rocky start that plagued last season and carry the summer success to this winter.

“We have five of our top seven guys back, but if they play the same as last year they’re going to have the same results,” LaScala said. “But if they come in bigger and stronger, and take this experience and learn from it, it should be a different story.”

4 The number of different locations Lisle’s boys basketball team played this summer. The Lions played at the Sycamore shootout, in the Westmont summer league, at the University of Illinois Team camp and also in a shootout in Braidwood.