Yipes! Sipes' clutch basket lifts Rams
When Andrew Sipes' mother stood up in the Grayslake Central fan section Saturday night at McHenry to try to get the cheers going, she got kind of a lukewarm response.
Suddenly there was some clapping, and a few chants of "De-fense," but it all trailed off rather quickly.
However, later on, when Sipes hit a runner in the lane with less than five seconds in the game, the Grayslake Central fans were all standing and screaming right alongside his mom.
Sipes' basket wound up being the difference in Grayslake Central's 50-49 victory over McHenry in a game that was nip-and-tuck from start to finish.
After his shot, the Warriors quickly advanced the ball, called a timeout and had 2.7 seconds to work with. But a Ryan McNaughton shot rimmed out at the buzzer.
Grayslake Central improves to 10-4 overall while McHenry drops to 6-8.
"Everyone is going to see the last basket, but it was the team as a whole," said Sipes, who scored a team-high 15 points. The Rams also got 10 points apiece from Alex Anderson and Mike Davis. "Our whole game is motion and when you penetrate at the end of the game, you would think that you're going to get a basket or a foul called.
"It just happened to be me to catch the ball off a pick and roll that got me open to start with and then I went to the basket. But if it weren't for the screen that got me open, then the whole thing wouldn't have worked."
What also worked for the Rams was free-throw shooting.
They went 7-for-7 from the line on the game and hit all 4 of their free throws in the fourth quarter.
Mike Brumm hit 2 free throws with about 30 seconds left that pulled the Rams to within 49-48.
On the next possession, Anderson fouled McNaughton, but McNaughton missed the front end of a 1-and-the-bonus.
Sipes scored his game-winner on the next trip.
"We didn't want to call a timeout (after McNaughton's missed free throw) to let them set up some kind of special defense," Grayslake Central coach Tim Bowen said. "I didn't want them to have time to think about another defense. We just wanted to get our motion going. So we just took our chances with that.
"And Andrew Sipes has just been like that all year long. Well, actually all the kids have. We had five kids on the floor who can shoot and we would have felt good about any one of them shooting that last shot."
Meanwhile, McHenry felt good about its last shot.
The Warriors ran their back screen play exactly the way it was drawn up and McNaughton got a good look at the basket.
"We had a good look and it just didn't go down," said McHenry coach Tim Paddock, who got a team-high 11 points out of both Zach Borter and Chris Madson. "If it goes down, we're dumping water on each other and hugging and acting like we won the world championship.
"But that didn't happen. But you know what, that's a good basketball team that we just played...and we're becoming a good basketball team, too. We haven't really had much of a history of winning here ever. So it's fun to see McHenry in a game like that."
GRAYSLAKE CENTRAL 50, MCHENRY 49
Grayslake Central _ Brumm 2 2-2 6, Anderson 4 1-1 10, Davis 4 2-2 10, Sipes 6 2-2 15, Zygmunt 1 0-0 2, O'Rourke 3 0-0 7, Snyder 0 0-0 0, Toth 0 0-0 0, Brocious 0 0-0 0. Totals 20 7-7 50.
McHenry _ McNaughton 1 0-1 3, Banwart 2 4-4 8, Borter 5 1-1 11, Bellich 4 0-0 9, Madson 5 1-4 11, Swanson 3 0-0 7, Mortell 0 0-0 0. Totals 20 6-10 49.
Grayslake Central 12 14 11 13 _ 50
McHenry 11 13 11 14 _ 49
Three-pointers: GC: Anderson, Sipes, O'Rourke; McH: McNaughton, Bellich, Swanson.
Fouled out: O'Rourke (GC)