Schaumburg stays in hunt for West title
Schaumburg is back in familiar territory.
The Saxons assured themselves a shot at the Mid-Suburban West boys basketball title with a 78-69 victory Friday before a near-capacity Senior Night crowd at Fremd.
Schaumburg will play division leader Hoffman Estates next Friday with the winner representing the West in the MSL championship game at Prospect on Feb. 25.
A Hoffman win would give the Hawks an 8-2 division record and the outright title, and a Saxons' win would leave both teams at 7-3. The tiebreaker would go in Schaumburg's favor by virtue of its two wins in head-to-head competition.
Schaumburg (18-6, 6-3) nearly wasted an early 17-point lead in a second half that saw each team score 45 points. Schaumburg led 28-11 with 4:18 left in the second quarter when Josh Spandiary (team-high 19 points) made his third 3-point basket of the half.
"I wanted to get one (win)," Spandiary said of the first win against Fremd in his basketball and football career. "If they left me open, I was going to take my shot."
"At times, they chose to allow him to be open," said Schaumburg coach Bob Williams.
Fremd started whittling away at the lead, and Joe Depaolis' back-to-back 3 pointers in the final 46 seconds of the half sliced the margin to 33-24.
Schaumburg built the lead back to 44-30 when Justin Swiercz scored with 5:05 left in the third quarter. But the Vikings (9-13, 4-5) rallied behind Chris Klimek (7 of his game-high 20 points in the quarter), Dan Bruno (5 of his 19) and Charlie Rosenberg (4) to make it 54-47 heading into the fourth quarter.
Bruno hit a pair of 3s, the second cutting the lead to 56-55 with 5:58, but the Vikings couldn't stop the balanced Saxons in the fourth quarter. Perrish Bell scored 6 of his 14 points on drives to the basket in the fourth, and senior Chris Kelly scored 5 of his career-best 17.
"I was looking to drive to the hoop and look for my teammates," Bell said.
Perhaps no points were more important than the consecutive baskets by Blake Mueller, which gave Schaumburg some breathing room, 60-55. The Vikings could get no closer down the stretch.
"We were trading baskets with them for a while," said Fremd coach Bob Widlowski. "(Schaumburg) came out shooting well in the first and third quarters. At the end of the first quarter, we were down 9 and played even the rest of the way.
"But our execution was lacking in the first five minutes of the game. We had 11 turnovers in the first half. I thought we really battled back."