Meadows pulls away from Wheeling
It appeared Wheeling and host Rolling Meadows were headed for a battle to the final buzzer as the third quarter neared its halfway point.
That's when the Mustangs' defense began forcing Wildcat turnovers at an alarming pace, and turned a game that Wheeling led 38-33 into a 64-43 win.
"The main thing was defensively we kind of took some things away that were hurting us in the first half," Meadows coach Kevin Katovich said.
The steals led to fastbreaks where several Mustangs had chances to score. Senior Richie Kemph led the way with a game-high 25, but sophomore guard Brian Nelms added 15 and junior center Paul Volkman had 11.
"We talk a lot about trying to make our defense create offense for us," Katovich said. "We got a lot of tipped passes and some steals, and that helped."
Kemph said the Mustangs didn't get down on themselves when Wheeling started to build a lead.
"We knew we were in this game the whole time," Kemph said. "Our seniors, me and Jimmy (Garoppolo), we wouldn't let our team get down like that. We could be down by 20, we're still going to fight back."
Garoppolo also contributed to the balanced offensive attack with 9 points.
"We know that teams are going to try to take away Richie, so that's going to give other guys more opportunities," Katovich said. "And the guys did a nice job executing."
Wheeling received solid performances from juniors Riley Harvey (17 points) and Tyler Shapiro (10 points).
The Wildcats have just four seniors on their roster and coach Lou Wool said his team young team has to learn from the kinds of mistakes it made Friday night.
"We played really good basketball for two and a half quarters, and we had a lead," Wool said. "What we learned from this game is that when things turn against us, we have to fight through it."
Wool said his team lost its confidence when the turnovers started to mount.
"I really believe we are going to continue to get better and pretty soon we're going to string together games where we play well for four quarters," Wool said.