Elgin 62, South Elgin 61
The biggest, most raucous crowd in South Elgin's brief boys basketball history inadvertently contributed to the home team's demise in a 62-61 loss to visiting rival Elgin Friday night.
The shrill screams of overexcited 17-year-olds combined with adult fans shouting the usual encouragement made it impossible for the referee to hear South Elgin coach Chaz Taft's repeated pleas for a timeout with his team trailing by a point and the ball languishing on the perimeter with 2.4 seconds left.
"I wanted the timeout," said Taft, who earlier this season was whistled for a technical foul for leaving the coach's box when he tried to signal for a timeout late in a game against Waubonsie Valley.
"(The referee) was right there in front of the (coach's) box," Taft added. "I'm screaming at him, I'm yelling timeout… But that's fine."
The play continued without interruption as South Elgin's Josh Glenn handed off to Adam Hodge at the top of the 3-point arc as time wound down.
Hodge, South Elgin's top scorer, who played freshman basketball at Elgin High with Elgin starters Jeremy Granger, D'Angelo Stewart and Armani Williams, was forced to the left wing by Elgin's Derell Howse and forced to put up a desperation heave with Tom Roth's hand in his face.
The shot caromed off the front rim as time expired and the Maroons celebrated a 62-61 victory that improved their record to 8-7 overall, 3-1 in the Upstate Eight Conference.
"I definitely got a good look at the shot, and I definitely could have gotten a foul called on that," Hodge said. "We actually called a timeout at the end, so we could have executed a little better at the end."
It was an important win for Elgin, which lost close games over the holidays to Batavia and Rockford Auburn.
"That's about the only positive we're drawing from this," said hoarse Elgin coach Mike Sitter of winning a close one. "We have a long way to go. We had an 11-point lead at halftime and we could have put them away early in the second half and we chose not to. We need to finish games a lot better than we did."
Elgin took the lead for the final time with 45 seconds left in the fourth quarter when Roth sank a tough jump shot from the elbow with a hand in his face.
"We were supposed to get it down low on the box to (Stewart), but there was no one open," Roth said. "I made a spin move and saw the lane open and just pulled it up. It felt good when it went in. It was definitely a big one against a rival."
The Maroons outscored the Storm 21-8 in the second quarter to take a 36-25 lead at halftime and led 50-45 going to the fourth quarter.
But South Elgin (8-9, 2-3) used a 10-0 run at the outset of the final period to take a 53-50 lead behind 4 points from Stephen Carter.
The lead changed hands eight more times before Roth put the Maroons on top to stay.
"We'd score, then they'd score," said Granger, who led the Maroons with 20 points. "We have to make stops and we didn't do that tonight. We just let them do whatever they wanted to do. As long as we got the win, it's OK. But we have to come back out (today against Niles North) and work on it."
Elgin won without three-year starting forward Kenny Williams, who is making an official visit this weekend to the Eastern Illinois football program.