Maine West stuns Rolling Meadows
Maine West junior guard Jared Pearson had a simple explanation on the defensive plan the Warriors had for Rolling Meadows Tuesday night in Des Plaines.
"We emphasized a lot on keeping them out of the corners," said Pearson, who led his team with 21 points. "Max Christie likes to pass there. We studied their shooting and saw that the corners were their hot spots in shooting percentage. The rest of the areas not so much. We played the numbers game."
The host Warriors, who built a 40-20 third quarter lead, withstood a late charge by the Mustangs to post a 66-61 win in the opening round of the Class 4A Maine West boys basketball regional.
The 10th-seeded Warriors (13-16) will now face No. 2 seed Glenbrook South Friday at 7 p.m. for the regional title.
"We had good preparation for this game," said Pearson. "Last time we only had about 45 minutes because we played the night before. This time we had a whole week. We used our practices to which we could keep our focus on them."
Rolling Meadows (20-9), the No. 7 seed, beat Maine West in January 64-58.
The Mustangs did not fare well in the first half, shooting just 5 of 29 and trailed 25-16 at halftime.
Lucas Glaister helped kick-start the Warriors' offense to start the second half.
Glaister (10 points) scored on an offensive rebound which led Maine West to a 15-3 run. Danny Kentgen, who scored 14 points and grabbed 8 rebounds, finished the run with a 3-pointer.
Christie, who would score 32 points and pull down 11 rebounds, had been held to 7 points on 3 of 11 shooting in the first half began to rev it up.
Christie scored 10 of his team's 12 points in shaving the lead to 42-31 at the end of the third quarter.
The Mustangs drew as close as 61-56 with 52 seconds left on a 3-pointer from Daniel Sobkowicz (13 points).
Maine West, which shot 16 of 24 from the free-throw line, missed two with 31 seconds left.
Glaister then came up with a key play seconds later.
"I knew Christie was going to change direction when he had the ball, "said Glaister. "I came up and got a piece of the ball. It came out and I was able to make the play scoring the basket on a layup. It was just great making that basket."
Glaister's was fouled on the play and his free throw gave Maine West a 64-56 lead with 21 seconds left.
"We picked a bad game to have a bad shooting night," said Rolling Meadows coach Kevin Katovich. "We didn't shoot well but there were other things. We didn't rebound well and Maine West got a lot of 50-50 balls. They got offensive rebounds and then made 3-pointers."
Maine West had a 32-24 rebounding edge.
Sean Collins added 9 points and 7 rebounds for the Warriors. Jacob Riedl added 8 points and 9 rebounds.
"Making free throws and that third quarter run were huge for us," said Maine West coach Tom Prokopij. "We had four days to prepare and you could tell our kids were prepared. Once we settled into the game they executed our game plan excellently. We were able to handle their physical style which got us to the free-throw line."