Arogundade helps St. Viator hold off Fremd
When St. Viator needed him most, Ore Arogundade came through.
After Fremd whittled an 11-point fourth quarter deficit down to 2 with under two minutes to play, Arogundade took matters into his own hands.
The junior swingman sank 5 of 6 free throws down the stretch to cap a 26-point, 10-rebound performance in leading the Lions to a 52-45 victory in the second round of the 35th annual Wheeling Wildcat Hardwood Classic.
St. Viator (9-1) advances to play in today's 7:15 p.m. semifinal against Niles North (9-2), a 64-49 winner over Loyola (8-5).
Arogundade made 10 of his 15 shots from the floor and scored 13 of his team's final 14 points.
“It seemed like he came up with some big buckets on a night when we had some guys struggle a little bit,” said St. Viator coach Mike Howland. “He picked up the slack nicely, which is what we needed him to do.”
The rest of the team shot 44 percent from the field, but Fremd's stingy man-to-man defense made it difficult for any other Lions besides Arogundade to get much offensive rhythm.
“I want to be able to do that when my team is down,” Arogundade said. “And I expect some of the other guys to do that when I'm down.”
St. Viator created separation in the second quarter, outscoring Fremd 16-6 as Arogundade netted 11. The Vikings (10-4) shot just 2-of-11 in the quarter, many of them in the lane.
“We had a lot of opportunities that we did not capitalize on,” said Fremd coach Bob Widlowski. “We had some early missed layups that we could have scored.”
Trailing 47-36, Fremd's Kevin Kubis hit 2 free throws to start a 9-0 run. Ben Carlson scored 5 of his 10 points during the stretch, including 2 free throws with 1:59 left to trim the Lions' lead to 2.
“When you play like that, the game is going to get interesting,” Howland said. “Fremd, credit to them, started coming after us and we didn't respond. We'll learn from it and hopefully be better for it tomorrow.”
“That would have been a heck of a comeback,” Widlowski said. “But what about the rest of the 30 minutes of the contest? We really did a nice job down the stretch, but I didn't think we executed as well as we should have in the remainder of the game.”
Kevin Hammarlund added 8 points for St. Viator while Hugh Masterson and Patrick Martin each had 7.
“They really executed well down the stretch,” Arogundade said. “We had to come back and execute ourselves, and I think we did that.”
Riley Glassmann scored 13 points for a Vikings squad that had just 5 turnovers but shot 35 percent (18-of-51) from the field. Sean Benka added 10 points.