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Lake Park catches WW South

It was a strange 17 minutes of basketball.

Lake Park's boys basketball team rallied in a big way to beat Wheaton Warrenville South 43-33 in Tuesday's DuKane Conference matchup in Wheaton.

The Lancers - who likely wrapped up the No. 1 seed in the Class 4A Addison Trail sectional - trailed 25-14 late in the second quarter, and then proceeded to hold WW South scoreless until a minute remained in a game.

That's more than 17 minutes stuck on 25 points. Lake Park took advantage with 21 straight points, although only 4 points came from the field. Over the final 12 minutes the Lancers knocked down 17 straight free throws to finish 26 of 27 from the line.

"At the start of the fourth quarter, I looked up and saw they still had 25 points," said Lancers senior guard Montrell Perry, one of the defensive leaders. "In the moment you're not even paying attention to the score, and the next thing you know we've got a 10-point lead. Coming into the second half we knew we had to get stops. We carried that through all the way to the end of the game."

WW South's Senior Night lineup sparked the team to an early lead. Ben Bastian and sophomore Tyler Fawcett knocked down a pair of 3s to stretch the Tigers' advantage to 25-14 before Lake Park dented the margin to 25-19 by halftime.

The Lancers (22-6, 8-4) dominated the third quarter while pushing their run to 15-0. No one scored for either team for seven minutes, a span that lasted to midway through the fourth quarter.

Eight straight free throws gave the Lancers a 37-25 lead with 1:26 left. WW South (17-11, 5-7) finally broke the drought on Parker Brown's jumper.

"The start of the second half was just a disaster," said Tigers coach Mike Healy. "We're throwing everything we can offensively, but we're just struggling at that end right now."

Trevor Montiel went 13 of 14 from the line while scoring a game-high 19 points for Lake Park. Luke Sgarbossa, who scored 9 points, gave the Lancers the lead for good at 26-25 midway through the third quarter on the team's final field goal.

Bastian and Fawcett scored 10 points apiece for WW South.

"This was the perfect example of a stay-the-course game," said Lake Park coach Billy Pitcher. "We were down, but we just stayed with our game plan and executed a little bit better."

Twitter: @kevin_schmit

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