St. Viator gets it together
While just about every other athletic contest in the area was canceled Friday night because of inclement weather that also wiped out a day of school, Carmel and St. Viator forged ahead with their East Suburban Catholic Conference game in Mundelein.
At first, the visiting Lions must have been wondering if that was indeed the right thing to do. Carmel shot out to an 8-0 lead and St. Viator didn't score its first basket until the 2:58 mark of the first quarter.
But in the end, the Lions are glad they ventured out instead of staying hunkered down inside for the night. They overcame their sluggish start and wound up cruising to a 60-46 victory.
"We were thrown off by some things that Carmel did that we hadn't seen before, like a 1-3-1 zone. We struggled with that," St. Viator guard Alan Aboona said. "But we got it going later."
St. Viator moves to 6-2 overall and 2-2 in the ESCC. Carmel drops to 4-7 overall and 2-2 in league play.
"Now, I'm glad we got (the game) in," St. Viator coach Joe Majkowski said with a laugh.
"(Falling behind 8-0) is not what you want to do on the road. I give Carmel a lot of credit. They came out playing hard and taking it to us.
"It took us a little while to get our bearings, but once we did, we were OK. I thought we played pretty well in the middle part of the game. We let it get away from us a little bit again at the end."
The Lions built leads as big as 19 points in the third quarter and pushed that to 21 points in the fourth, thanks in part to the play of Aboona and fellow guard Bryce Hensley.
They finished with a game-high 16 and 13 points, respectively, including two 3-pointers apiece.
But Carmel refused to go away quietly.
The Corsairs went on a 10-0 run late in the fourth quarter to cut that 21-point deficit to 11 points with 1:02 left to play.
"Everyone was working so hard," said Carmel guard Tim Sachs, who celebrated his 18th birthday by tallying 10 points, one of his best scoring efforts of the season. "We've all been working out butts off in practice and it's carrying over to the games. I think that's why we started so well.
"They just started hitting 3s and getting penetration and we couldn't stop that."
St. Viator also got double figures from Richard McLoughlin, who finished with 11 points. Patrick Cox and Jonathan Huisel shared team-high scoring honors for Carmel with 11 points apiece.
"We still make too many errors and we have to get smarter with the way we play," Carmel coach John Ryan said. "But I'm happy because I can see we're making progress. (St. Viator) is one of the three best teams in the conference and we were picked to finished 10th out of 10 teams. The fact that we played this team so hard is good. I would say that means we can compete with the other teams in our conference."