Melton, Antioch have their moment

Some wins are more memorable than others and the Antioch boys basketball team got one for the memory bank on Saturday night.

Antioch guard Kyle Melton negated a go-ahead 3-pointer by Grayslake North with about 30 seconds left when he dribbled the length of the court and scored the winning basket on a driving layup.

Clearly not a moment that will be forgotten anytime soon.

But, interestingly, what might be reminisced about even more one day is that as the final buzzer sounded and the visiting Sequoits erupted from their bench to celebrate a dramatic 56-55 nonconference victory, the buzzer never stopped buzzing.

No joke.

Never has a gym cleared faster after a game that needed to be decided on a last-second shot.

Somehow, the buzzer on the Grayslake North scoreboard malfunctioned and just kept ringing and ringing and ringing at full blast. It continued on for so long, in fact, that the gym was almost entirely empty and players were coming out from the locker room dressed in street clothes and the issue had yet to be resolved.

"It's still going," Melton said long after the game with a smile and shake of his head.

Melton could care less, though. He was just happy that the Sequoits got another win to move to 2-3 on the season. In recent years, the wins have been few and far between for Antioch, which had won just six of 52 contests in the previous two seasons.

"We needed a win like this," Melton said. "We haven't won a lot in the past two years. We're really trying to pick it up this year."

The Sequoits had to do that a few times in order to stay with Grayslake North.

Thanks to some hot shooting by guard Matt Pucher, the Knights were up by six points (18-12) at the end of the first quarter and by seven points midway into the second quarter.

But the Sequoits stayed relevant with a key second quarter 3-pointer by Melton and free throws by Karl Nettgen and managed to tie the game at halftime, 28-28.

Pucher put the Knights out ahead again in the third quarter. But Antioch erased a four-point deficit at the start of the fourth quarter by coming out with a 13-5 run.

"We tried a few different things defensively," said Antioch coach Michael Skinner, whose team trapped and pressed in the second half. "We got them to throw the ball away a few times."

Grayslake North (3-3) had 15 turnovers on the game but hit enough shots to stay close and set the stage for some theatrics in the waning moments.

Down by 4 points with under a minute to play, Grayslake North got the ball to Myles Siemsen, who scored 5 of his 11 points in a matter of seconds. He scored on a laypup off an Antioch turnover, then he hit a 3-pointer that gave the Knights a 55-54 lead with 30 seconds to play.

But that's when Melton, who tallied a total of 15 points and was Antioch's only double-figure scorer, drove the length of the court and came up with his own heroics.

"That was a tough one," said Pucher, who finished with a game-high 18 points. "We had turnovers and missed free throws, things that we work on every day in practice. We just didn't play our game."