Meadows' train keeps rolling with triumph at Prospect
Rolling Meadows looks like a runaway locomotive.
The Mustangs went into Jean Walker Field House at Prospect Friday night and breezed past the Knights 57-43 in a battle of boys basketball unbeatens in the Mid-Suburban East.
"Tonight was a little hard to get into a rhythm," Rolling Meadows coach Kevin Katovich said. "We didn't get there for a lot of reasons. I am happy with our kids. We have shown that we can win many different ways."
Rolling Meadows (17-2, 5-0) now has run through its East opponents without much debris on the tracks. The Mustangs have won all five conference games by an average of 29.2 points.
"We will take 5-0 to start the East for sure, " said Katovich, whose team is the defending MSL East champion.
"We don't really care who gets the credit or who gets the points. We just want to keep winning and keep getting better."
Prospect (9-8, 4-1) looked to contain the Mustangs' Orlando Thomas and Cameron Christie. The Knights did a pretty good job of limiting their touches early.
Rolling Meadows then showed that it has plenty of engines on its train.
Foster Ogbonna, Mark Nikolich-Wilson and Ian Miletic all stepped up. They enabled the Mustangs to score 10 unanswered points to pull away from an early 10-7 lead to a 20-7 advantage midway through the second quarter.
"Teams are going to try that," said Nikolich-Wilson, who finished with 8 points and 8 rebounds. "But we have a bunch of guys who can score. It was real even scoring for us. Everyone got buckets."
Ogbonna was a huge recipient of less attention. He scored a game-high 15 points, including a 3-pointer to begin the game.
"We have other people besides Cam and Lando," Ogbonna said. "Our team is deep. Anytime we see Cameron or Orlando getting harassed, we step up. I feel confident. I am getting more playing time and have more feel for the game."
Meadows led 29-14 at the half. The Mustangs looked like they were going to break the game wide open on free throws by Thomas (11 points) and a basket by Christie (14 points) to lead 33-14.
Prospect had other ideas to attempt to derail the Mustangs.
The Knights took a couple of key charges and began to play a bit more physical. They got the margin down to 43-32 with 4:48 left in the fourth quarter. But 4 consecutive free throws by Christie put the game away.
"They came out and did some different things on the defensive end," Prospect coach Brad Rathe said. "We had them prepared. We watched them 10-12 times on film. But they did a nice job of changing up their defenses, kind of like mid-possession."
Prospect was led by Owen Schneider, who had 14 points. Alex Georgakas had 11 points and David Marshall added 10 points.
"We just were quite aggressive enough offensively in the first half," Rathe said. "We played a little too slow and little too passive."