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Chapman makes sure Stevenson plays on

This is when basketball season gets really tough for seniors.

It’s state tournament time and there’s no margin for error. Lose one and you’re done. Maybe forever.

Stevenson senior guard Ryan Chapman has been mulling the finality of it all, and is trying his hardest to put it off.

“This is a really tough time for me, actually,” Chapman said. “I don’t want my high school career to end. I’ve been playing basketball since I was a little kid. I work hard during the off-season. I just want to keep playing.”

Chapman is a big reason he and his Stevenson teammates will be playing at least one more day.

He pumped in a season-high 20 points, including 4 three-pointers, on Monday to lead the 14th-seeded Patriots to a 61-41 victory over No. 18 Grant in regional action at Mundelein.

Stevenson, which got double-figures out of four players and improves 14-11, advances to face No. 2 Mundelein at 7:30 p.m. tonight. Grant wraps up its season with a 13-14 record.

Chapman, who has received some interest from Division III college coaches but isn’t sure he’ll continue his career beyond high school, scored 13 of his points in the second half. He reeled off 11 straight points, 9 on 3-pointers, during the final minutes of the third quarter to help the Patriots push a moderate 7-point lead to a cushy 18-point lead.

“This could be it for me. That’s why I really want to keep going. I really didn’t want to lose tonight,” Chapman said. “My shot was feeling good. They (Grant) scouted us well and knew we wanted to get the ball inside. They were (collapsing) down on the post and that left me open outside. And I was able to knock down some shots.”

Ditto for Michael Fleming, Kevin Earl and Colby Cashaw. They all knocked down shots for Stevenson, too, finishing with 12, 11 and 10 points, respectively.

“They’ve got a lot of big guys inside,” said forward Jared Helmich, who was the only player for Grant to score in double-figures. He had 10 points. “They also have all those three-point threats. We lost our guys sometimes and they got wide-open looks.

“We kind of got tired in the third quarter. We picked it back up in the fourth quarter but it was too late.”