Lake Park's Perry seals win over Larkin

Saddled with foul trouble, Montreal Perry felt like he couldn't fully contribute to his Lake Park boys basketball team on Saturday.

But when it mattered most, the Lancers' junior guard came up big.

Sealing the game with a pair of free throws with 15 seconds left, Perry helped Lake Park hold off Larkin 49-45 in Roselle.

"I felt like I had to make those for my teammates," said Perry, who scored all 9 of his points from the line. "They had kept us up the entire game, I thought the least I could do was knock those down for my team."

For a portion of the second half, it didn't appear that the Lancers (3-3) would need any late free throws when the home team built a lead of 16 shortly after halftime. But a 13-3 run by the Royals, spurred on by back-to-back 3-pointers from Jashon Johnson-Seals and Pierre Black, brought the visitors within 41-35 heading into the fourth.

Larkin (1-5) ultimately closed the gap to 2 on another 3 from Damari Wheeler-Thomas and had multiple chances to tie or take the lead in the closing stages. Wheeler-Thomas led his team with 15 points while Black finished with 9.

"I'm proud of the way our guys battled back," Larkin coach Deryn Carter said, "and answered the challenge as far as the position we put ourselves in. We are trying to find our way as a group. The biggest positive I take from this game is we were down 2 with 20 seconds to go and we executed exactly what we wanted to get."

Lake Park, which used an 18-6 spurt to lead 28-15 at half, put three players into double figures, starting with the 14 points of Luke Sgarbosa. Trevor Montiel added 13 points and 11 rebounds and Tommy Zakic chipped in with 10.

"We kind of had struggles rebounding, but we did pull it out," Sgarbosa said. "We still got the win. We had a lot of transition points in the first half and in the second half, had some nice steals. This definitely gives us a lot of confidence. We will continue to grow and get better from here."

The Lancers had already dropped a pair of games this season by two points.

"It's nice to be on the other side of a close game," Lake Park coach Billy Pitcher said. "We were really clicking and playing well there. But they did a great job, they made some great adjustments. They are a tough team to play with all of their guards. So that's a big win."