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Bartlett surprises West Chicago

There have certainly been some growing pains early in the season for a very inexperienced Bartlett boys basketball team, but on Friday night the Hawks did some real coming of age.

Bartlett came from behind to knock off a very good West Chicago team that features Division I prospect Tai Bibbs, 40-39 in Upstate Eight Valley Division action to snap a 4 game losing streak.

Ben Fisher hit the first of 2 free throws with 4 seconds left in the game to break a 39-39 tie. Bibbs' last second desperation 3-pointer from 35 feet at the buzzer was well off the mark.

"We have been getting slightly better every game," Bartlett coach Jim Wolfsmith said. "The last couple games I thought we competed real hard. Tonight we competed real hard again and it got us a W. I am really happy with the way we played. I have said from the beginning we are going to have some struggles, but we have the potential to become a dangerous team by the end of the season. I think we showed a little bit of what we are capable of tonight."

Fisher had a big finish. In addition to the go-ahead free throw he had a 3-point play with 2:50 left to play that put the Hawks up 39-35 at the time. However, West Chicago tied it up 39-39 on back-to-back baskets by Isaac Nelson and Bibbs.

The Hawks (3-5, 1-1) took over on their final possession with 1:48 on the clock and ran it all the way down to when Ben Tompson drove the lane to draw two defenders and then dished off to an open Fisher, who tried to go up for a layup and was fouled with 4 seconds left.

"Ben made a great pass on that play," Fisher said. "I felt pretty confident going to the line. I just thought about how much I've practiced for these kind of moments. It was a big win for us to get us out of our losing streak. It showed we can win a game against a tough team."

The Hawks trailed 35-30 earlier in the fourth quarter. Tompson helped bring them back. He had a basket on a driving layup and a couple of free throws that put Bartlett up 36-35. He finished with a team-high 12 points.

"It's all about confidence with our group of players," Tompson said. "This is pretty big. It should give us a lift. We played really well at the end of the game. We were able to get some turnovers at the top of our 1-3-1 defense and that kind of picked up the tempo for us. Then we were able to get to the basket on the offensive end."

The Hawks were able to keep Bibbs in check. He did score a game-high 17 points, but shot just 6-of-18 from the field.

"He's obviously one of the best players in the area," Wolfsmith said. "But I thought we did a good job with our zone pressure on him. It was a good team effort on him. We were able to make him give the ball up and we got out and contested his shots. I like a lot of things we did tonight. I thought we did a great job running the clock down at the end of the game. I thought we were unselfish with the basketball. We don't have that go-to guy right now that we turn to when the game is on the line, so we have to play team basketball and we did that very well tonight."

West Chicago (6-2, 0-1) shot just 11-of-44 (25 percent) from the field.

"The shooting is always going to come and go," West Chicago coach Bill Reechia said. "But you always have to execute the little things and we didn't do those tonight. We made some very uncharacteristic mistakes. They played much more disciplined than us and deserved to win. If this doesn't serve as a wake-up call I don't know what else would."

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