advertisement

St. Francis beats ACC in OT

If Thursday’s regular-season finale was a playoff tuneup, the St. Francis and Aurora Central Catholic boys basketball teams could each take away positives.

They also could find areas to improve.

St. Francis committed 21 turnovers in the Suburban Christian Conference crossover but escaped with a 60-58 overtime win when Mike Scholl drove the left baseline, pulled up and swished a 10-foot jumper with 3.7 seconds left in overtime.

Out of an ACC timeout with 2.5 seconds left, Kent Brauweiler’s court-length baseball pass was knocked to the ground, where it was batted around until time expired.

“I got the ball, the 3 wasn’t there so I made a pump fake,” said Scholl, who hit five 3s and scored 17 points, second to teammate Ryan Coyle’s game-high 23 plus 9 rebounds.

“It wasn’t the prettiest shot, but we’ll take it,” Scholl said. “If it goes through the hoop it counts. I’ll take it. It was great atmosphere, great comeback, a great way to end the season.”

Aurora Central (13-13) squandered a 43-31 lead with 1:43 left in the third quarter, on its home court. St. Francis (14-11) forced the Chargers into 6 turnovers in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter, and Coyle hit a 3 for a 52-51 lead with 3:02 left to play, the Spartans’ first lead since 12-11.

Scholl followed with a 3, which was countered by ACC’s Paul Kaminski. St. Francis’ Brian Spahn hit a free throw for the last of his 11 points, and ACC’s Ryan Harreld made 2 free throws with 20.6 seconds left in regulation to tie 56-56.

“It hurts,” Harreld said, “but it’ll motivate us to take care of the ball. That’s why we lost the game, obviously.”

St. Francis coach Shawn Healy said: “When we got those turnovers in the fourth quarter, I think we scored off of all those turnovers, which was key. When you’re taking a possession away from a team and scoring on that possession, you’re going to make up the difference quickly.”

That difference was initially created the same way, as ACC forced the Spartans into 7 third-quarter turnovers. Harreld and Joey McEachern each snagged 2 steals in the stretch. They finished with 14 and 13 points, respectively.

With Harreld hitting three 3s and Robert DeMyers rejecting shots right and left — the 6-foot-4 junior blocked 7 shots and scored 14 points — the Chargers led 30-22 at halftime and were up 43-31 on a DeMyers baby hook. ACC still led 51-45 at 4:43 of the fourth quarter.

“Outside of the last three or four minutes, I thought we played pretty well tonight,” said Chargers coach Nathan Drye. “It’s a good thing this happened tonight as opposed to on Wednesday.”