Wheeling wins one for Wool

The Wheeling boys basketball team had a special reason to win Friday's Mid-Suburban East game against visiting Hersey.

In all his years as a player and coach, Wheeling's Lou Wool never missed one of his team's basketball games.

However, Friday night, Wool and his family were at the hospital for their mother's surgery.

With assistant Don Rowley Jr. taking the reins, the Wildcats rallied from a 10-point second-quarter deficit and posted a 51-43 victory.

The host Wildcats (5-8, 2-2) used an 11-0 run down stretch to pull away for the victory.

Senior guard Michael Barton (10 points) hit a 3-pointer to start the rally with 3:38 left in the game.

"We wanted to play hard and get the win for Mr. Wool," said Barton, who also handed out 6 assists and collected a pair of steals. "This was the first game in his life he missed. We wanted to defeat Hersey for the conference win but more importantly, we wanted to win for our coach."

Seniors James Kurtz (3 assists) and Michael Zimmer (6 rebounds, 2 steals) led the Wildcats with 12 points apiece while senior Robert Carter added 7, including his team's first 6 points.

"Without coach Wool, that's all we were thinking about - he and his family," said Rowley Jr., whose father Don (former Hersey head coach) was sitting alongside as a current member of the Wheeling staff. "The kids really wanted to win for him (Wool) and they put in their best effort of the season. By far, we played our best man-to-man defense."

Rowley Jr. was particularly pleased with Zimmer's defensive work.

"That No. 23 (junior Kyle Miklasz, who led Hersey with 12 points) killed us with the 3 3-pointers in the first half," said Rowley Jr., who played for Hersey. "But Zimmer shut him down in the second half (1 free throw)."

Senior Kyle Mengarelli added 11 points for Hersey (5-10, 1-3) while junior Jordan Mertes added 9.

"This team had no soul," said Hersey coach Steve Messer. "We didn't run a good offense. We were afraid. We were settling for jump shots that didn't take any risk-taking instead of attacking the rim. When we got the lead (19-9), we were doing those things."

Miklasz's 3-pointer made it 18-9 but Wheeling received buckets from Zimmer, Frank Frasco (4 rebounds) and Barton to quickly cut it to 4 points and trailed only 23-20 at the break.

"At half, we knew if we hustled and played good defense, we could win the game," Barton said. "We started communicating better and we knew if we could get the ball into the post we had a better chance of winning the game."

"We had balanced scoring which was great," Rowley Jr. added. "The kids were sharing the basketball and playing unselfish."