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Sports
No letting up : Sports : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisNo letting up
| Oswego boys' basketball team goes 3-1 at Hoops for Healing
| by Laura M. Medina
| 11/29/2012
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After providing one of the tournament's best games - and likely one of the season's most memorable upsets - in its previous game, the last thing the Oswego boys' basketball team wanted to do was falter in its Hoops for Healing finale.
Instead, the Panthers turned in another solid effort to secure third place overall, topping tournament co-host Naperville North 65-58 on Friday night at Oswego.
An 80-66 loss to Naperville Central to start the tournament on Nov. 19 wasn't exactly what Oswego (3-1) had planned as it entered head coach Kevin Schnable's 16th season at the helm, but the team quickly bounced back the following night with a convincing 64-44 win over Metea Valley.
The Mustangs finished 1-3 for a fifth-place standing in the bracket after defeating the Panthers' crosstown rival Oswego East (0-4) 73-52 earlier Friday.
But the tournament's most surprising game occurred on Nov. 21, when the underdog Panthers used a 13-2 run to unseat Proviso East, the Class 4A state runner-up.
Naturally, a let-down performance in Friday's game would truly have been a tough pill for the Panthers to swallow, so they instead took to the court with a sense of urgency.
"We were concerned about it, and maybe we dwell on it too much as coaches, about falling flat," Schnable said. "Coming off of Wednesday night and sitting down at eating that turkey (last Thursday), I was more nervous about Friday's game than I was about Wednesday's. You just don't want to fall flat. You don't want to be the team that gets the biggest win in the tournament and also the biggest loss in two days."
To prevent that, the Panthers opened the game on a 5-0 run before eventually making it a 12-6 score by the end of the first behind five points from senior Miles Simelton.
Oswego maintained control throughout the second and used a 17-3 run in the final 5:42 of the quarter to take a 32-14 halftime lead.
Seven different players contributed in that stretch, with Simelton accounting for five points, and senior reserve Danny Mangers chipping in four of his 10 total points.
"It's fun to be a part of," Schnable said. "Our kids are playing the right way. They're making the next pass or the extra pass for a better shot. I love it when all five guys touch it; it makes for beautiful basketball, and our guys love it, too."
Senior Elliot McGaughy, who scored a quiet two points in the first half, started off the second with a driving basket, and he played an integral part to Oswego's 9-0 run in the ensuing two minutes, as he tallied four more points and an assist on Simelton's energy-creating alley-oop that put the home side ahead 43-17.
"Me and Elliot, we throw them down all the time during practice, and we were just waiting to get one in during a game," Simelton said. "I think he stole the ball, and I just leaked out on the right side. I looked directly at his eyes, and though, 'There it goes.'"
Naperville North, though, soon went on a run of its own with 3:14 left in the third, scoring seven straight points to make it a 29-46 lead just about a minute later. That advantage was about the same at the end of the quarter, after a pair of three-pointers from McGaughy and Mangers were matched by a jumper and a shot from beyond the arc to make the lead 52-34 heading into the fourth.
Though the Panthers appeared to have the game well in hand, the Huskies had other plans in mind, as they started the quarter with a Jayson Winick-directed 6-2 run in the first 1:22 of play. He also forced two turnovers in that stretch.
In the next three minutes, Naperville North outscored Oswego 11-4, thanks in part to Player of the Game Derek Westman's 10 points, and made it just a seven-point lead. And with just 49.5 left on the clock, the Panthers' advantage was just 61-56 after leading by as many as 26 points earlier.
"We played well for 20 minutes, played a solid game of basketball at both ends," Schnable said. "We gave up 14 points in the first half, but 44 in the second, I'm not happy about that, and we clearly communicated that. Our defense and our defensive rebounding fell off; we lost focus, and we kept them in the game by fouling them on the defensive end. We kept sending them to the line. Credit (head coach Jeff Powers') kids - they're never going to give up. He's an excellent basketball coach, and they hung in there until the end."
Fortunately for the Panthers, the Huskies' lone opportunities to regain possession as time expired was at the expense of fouling Simelton, the game's leading scorer with 21 points, and he drained four from the line to preserve the 65-58 victory.
Simelton was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player, while McGaughy, with 18 points - 16 in the second half - and four rebounds to accompany three steals and three assists earned him a Player of the Game nod.
After what could have been a disastrous start to the season with a tournament-opening loss and a tough slate of games in the bracket, Oswego found itself in much better position following the final buzzer last Friday.
"(Last) Monday was a nightmare, but we were thinking our best case scenario was 2-2, and here we are 3-1," Schnable said. "But it's not just about winning; it's about how we win and how we play. We played right on Wednesday - we played right for 36 - and (last Friday), we played right for 20. We want to get better from one game to the next, so we'll take the 3-1. We feel like coming out of this tournament that we've faced some quality competition, and we're prepared for conference play."
Oswego will hit the Southwest Prairie Conference schedule hard in the next few weeks, with three of its upcoming four games against league competition, starting with tomorrow night's matchup at Plainfield South.
"Our coaches were telling us it's a lot better to be 3-1 heading into conference instead of 2-2," Simelton said, "so we fought really hard as a team after that first loss to Naperville Central, and then, we had a great win against Proviso East, and we just kept it rolling."
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