St. Charles East's Call stuns WW South at buzzer
St. Charles East basketball coach Patrick Woods often tells his team a certain quote - "the road to success is on the same road as failure - it's just a little further down."
Judging from Tuesday night's 53-52 upset triumph over Wheaton Warrenville South (21-3, 9-1), the Saints (11-14, 5-5) appear to be traveling down the proverbial road.
Senior guard Steven Call's driving layup at the buzzer sent the Saints into a celebratory scene in front of their bench and handed the Tigers their first conference defeat in nearly two years.
"It's my first game-winner - it feels really good," said Call, whose 11 third-quarter points enabled the Saints to rally from a 31-22 halftime deficit.
"It's definitely going to help us in future games."
Jack Borri led the Saints with 15 points, 4 rebounds and 3 assists - the last coming on the game's final play after the Tigers missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with 8.9 seconds remaining.
Jacob Vrankovich grabbed the rebound of the missed free throw, dribbled past half-court and called the Saints' final timeout with 5 seconds left.
"That was our plan to get across half-court and call timeout," said Woods. "We lined up in a diamond. Send a guy deep and we send the other shooter to the corner. We knew the inbounder (Call) was going to be open. Jack (Borri) got it back to him.
"He was supposed to get a step-up screen, which didn't happen, but the way Eddie (Herrera) positioned himself, it occupied two (Tigers players) and he was able to get to the basket - and finish."
Herrera finished with 12 points and 7 rebounds for the Saints, who followed up on last weekend's 67-54 victory over Glenbard North with their biggest win in a long time.
"It's as big a win as we've had in four years," said Woods. "I'm proud of them. No one expected us to beat them. They're a great team. They've had a great run. (Mike) Healy is a great coach.
"We went into this game with nothing to lose."
The Saints' full-court pressure helped force 18 WW South turnovers and otherwise served as a disruption to the Tigers' offense.
"We thought sitting back and playing defense against their offense would not be productive for us, so we tried to force the issue," said Woods. "We wanted to play fast. We were either going to give them a layup or wide-open shot - or get the ball back.
"I thought we did a real good job of attacking them defensively."
Three free throws from Borri gave the Saints a 41-38 third-quarter lead, and the fourth quarter featured 4 ties and 4 times when the Tigers grabbed the lead, setting the stage for Call's buzzer-beating heroics that followed Herrera's layup with 19 seconds remaining which pulled the Saints within 52-51.
"We'll take the easy two any time," said Woods. "We had plenty of time."
Senior Braylen Meredith paced the Tigers with 23 points and 9 rebounds, while sophomore Luca Carbonaro and junior Max O'Connell added 9 and 8 points, respectively.
"They (Saints) deserved to win the game," said Healy. "We weren't ready - and that's on me.
"We weren't ourselves. It wasn't anything that we didn't expect - we just didn't handle things well."
Drew Clarke added 9 points off the bench for the Saints.