Conant rallies past Harlan; Viator hangs tough

Conant and Harlan arrived late in their Wednesday night matchup in the 31st annual St. Viator Thanksgiving tournament.

Harlan finally reached Arlington Heights from the south side of Chicago about 45 minutes after the scheduled 6 p.m. tipoff.

And Conant (1-1) finally took control in the final nine minutes and pulled away to a 60-48 victory.

"We hung in there and it was good to see," Conant senior Jeff Keegan said after scoring 7 points in a decisive 13-0 run. "We kept fighting."

Senior Antwan Watson scored 10 of his 21 points in the third quarter and 2 free throws by 6-foot-6 senior standout Joseph White (14 points) put Harlan (0-2) up 40-37 with 1:09 left in the third quarter.

But a driving 3-point play and a short baseline drive by Keegan bridging the final two quarters put Conant ahead for good.

"I thought we gave up a couple too many momentum runs," said Conant coach Tom McCormack. "For the most part we came into the fourth quarter in a close game and executed the way we needed to execute."

Particularly at the free-throw line, where Keegan hit all 7 of his attempts as Conant finished 25-for-30. Harlan never got closer than 8 points in the final 4:15.

Junior Tim Gilhooly came off the bench to score 13 points on 5-for-7 shooting and senior Chris Hoffman had 10 points and 5 rebounds. Senior Tom Sotos scored 4 of his 7 points in the late-game run and had 5 rebounds and 2 assists.

"The guys coming off the bench made contributions as big as some of the other guys," McCormack said of his inexperienced 10-deep crew.

"We've worked on it all summer and seen flashes of what we can do," said Keegan, who had 3 assists with junior Tony Rizzo. "We have to work on improving night in and night out to eventually get to where we need to be."

Thornton 52, St. Viator 45: Encouraged but hardly satisfied was how St. Viator felt after it trailed Thornton by just a point with 2½ minutes to play.

But Viator (1-1) missed its final five 3-point tries and Thornton (2-0) scored the last 6 points to get in position to play for the tournament title in a scheduled 6 p.m. Friday start against Harlan.

"It's one of those cases where you find positives but you can't be satisfied with saying, 'Oh, we were close,'" said Viator coach Joe Majkowski. "I don't want to do that and our players don't want to do that."

Senior Mike Landuyt didn't after sparking the fourth-quarter rally with 4 of his 10 points and 4 of his 5 rebounds.

But Landuyt did see the bright side after sophomores Richard McLoughlin (13 points) and Alan Aboona (11 points) showed no fear against the perennial south suburban power.

"I think it shows we can pretty much play with anyone," Landuyt said. "We knew that coming out but I'm not sure anyone else did.

"We weren't scared."

Aboona wasn't as he hit a couple of tough spinning drives in the lane. McLoughlin wasn't after a scoreless first half as he sparked a rally from an 8-point deficit.

McLoughlin's third 3 from the right corner off Landuyt's feed cut the deficit to 46-45 with 2:32 to play.

"It wasn't there all night long," Majkowski said, "but there were stretches we played team defense really well against their quickness and caused some turnovers."

But Viator couldn't capitalize on one forced by Landuyt with 1:18 to play between a layup and 2 free throws by Richie Thompson (15 points, 7 rebounds).

"We started hitting a couple of shots down the stretch when we needed them and our defense picked up," Landuyt said. "We got stops when we needed them, but obviously we didn't do enough as we needed."