South Elgin hangs on for win

South Elgin made the most of a do-over to beat Maine South 41-40 at the 35th Annual Jack Tosh Holiday Classic at York High School on Tuesday.

Trailing 40-39, South Elgin 6-foot-9 center Dani Lopez came up short on a one-handed attempt along the baseline. Maine South grabbed the rebound and was fouled with 22 seconds left in the game.

However, with a chance to extend their lead, the Hawks missed the front end of the bonus and South Elgin hauled in the rebound, giving the Storm a second chance to score the game winner.

After a timeout with 12 seconds to play, South Elgin junior guard Tommy Childs drove from the left wing, cut through two defenders and banked in a left-handed runner with 3.8 ticks showing on the clock to give the Storm their eventual winning margin.

"It was a play originally designed for Dani or Jeffrey (Lewis)," Childs said, "but time was winding down and I heard Dani tell me to go to the hole. Dani boxed his guy out and told me to go in."

Maine South (7-5) inbounded to midcourt and called timeout with 3.5 seconds left. The plan was to get the ball into the paint to 6-foot-7 junior Kevin Schlitter, who had already scored a game-high 14 points.

The Hawks indeed triggered to Schlitter in the lane, but South Elgin's Josh Smith knocked the ball away from behind, the ball bounced away harmlessly toward midcourt and the game ended, much to the disbelief of Maine South coach Tony Lavorato, Jr., who ran onto the court toward the official to dispute the lack of a foul call.

"On the last play you want to get the big kid the opportunity, but you can't score if you can't catch it," Lavorato said. "Partly that's (Schlitter's) fault, and partly I thought it was a very poor no-call due to the fact that the last 3 calls on their end were pretty ticky-tack. So it was a little unfortunate that they took an old-school approach and said they were going to put the whistle in their pocket when they didn't do that the last two minutes."

Smith, of course, saw the final play a bit differently.

"I thought I was going after the ball," said Smith, a 6-4 senior who saw just over four minutes of playing time. "Obviously, their coach went crazy. If you weren't in there you probably could have heard him a block down. Coach (Chaz Taft) just said to go in there and be athletic and that's what I did."

South Elgin (9-3) rallied from a 28-14 deficit with a 20-5 run over a span of 10:44 that bridged the third and fourth quarters. Lopez capped the surge with a putback of his own miss with 3:03 left in the game.

The lead changed hands five more times in the final minutes until Childs tallied the winning basket.

The victory and seventh-place finish at York after a 2-2 showing was of some solace to South Elgin (9-3), the No. 1 seed heading into the tournament.

"We build for the state tournament, and this was a character builder right here," Taft said. "This shows toughness, guys scrapping, digging on the floor. Who wants to take that last shot to win it?"