VH overcomes planning woes, clips Carmel

It was in the game plan.

But game plans sometimes go out the window when high school kids are distracted by the aura of an NBA arena.

Perhaps that's what happened to the Vernon Hills boys basketball team as it tried to compensate Saturday afternoon at the United Center while standout forward Kenny Rideout was sitting on the bench in the fourth quarter in foul trouble.

The Cougars knew they had to make an adjustment, they simply forgot what adjustment that was.

Any time Rideout was out of the game, the Cougars were supposed to help down low on 6-foot-6 Carmel center Jack Baucus.

"Our scouting report said, 'If Kenny's in foul trouble, help on Baucus. If Kenny is in foul trouble, help on Baucus.' We talked about that all week," Vernon Hills coach Matt McCarty said. "But we just went brain dead and (Chris) Weaver was down there in the post defending him one-one-one, giving up 50 pounds and a couple of inches and that just didn't work out."

With the 6-foot-4 Rideout out, Baucus scored the first 9 points of the fourth quarter to tie the game with about four minutes to play.

But Rideout wound up making up for the lost time later on and powered Vernon Hills to a 39-37 victory. With only 30 seconds to play and the game tied, he rebounded his own miss and scored what ended up being the winning basket.

As the final seconds ticked off the clock, Carmel had a couple of shots at the basket but couldn't connect.

Vernon Hills, which was up by as many as 10 points in the second half, improves to 5-4 overall while Carmel, which got a game-high 19 points from Baucus, drops to 2-10.

"We were all sweatin' it a little bit. It was kind of scary," Rideout said of the frantic last couple of minutes. He finished with a team-high 14 points while Riaz Hoveydai came off the bench to score 10 points for the Cougars. "We were fouling too much and that let them get back into it. But we hit some clutch free throws. There's nothing like winning here."

There's nothing like winning, period. The Cougars head into the holiday tournament season with their first winning record in McCarty's five-year tenure.

"It's a nice win to start the holiday," McCarty said. "This is a good spot to be in. It makes Christmas a little more merry. It's a really big win for confidence."

Carmel could have used a win, too. The Corsairs have now dropped five games in a row.

"I was just trying to get us back (into the game at the beginning of the fourth quarter) because I did not want to lose this game," Baucus said. "But it just turned out for the worse.

"(Winning this game) would have been huge momentum going into (the Wheeling holiday tournament). We just wanted this one. It was big. We just need to work a little bit harder."