WW South bides its time, then holds off Palatine
Wheaton Warrenville South used the final minute of time wisely in Monday afternoon's second-round consolation bracket game of York's 36th annual Jack Tosh Holiday Classic in Elmhurst.
Reilly O'Toole scored twice and the Tigers made all the right moves on the defensive end to pull out a 42-41 victory over Palatine.
"I thought our kids continued to respond and continued to play," WWS coach Mike Healy said of comebacks from 23-17 at halftime and 33-27 with 6:03 to play.
"We weren't playing our game in the first half," said WWS senior guard Travis Kern, who scored all 12 of his points after halftime on 4-for-4 shooting behind the 3-point line. "We needed to get on our game (defensively) a little bit because we're a better team than that."
O'Toole scored 6 of his game-high 16 points in the final 3:54 as WWS (7-3) advanced to today's 5 p.m. consolation bracket semifinal against St. Ignatius (5-5), a 60-45 winner over St. Francis.
Tommy Galvan had 20 points and was 5-for-9 on 3s for Palatine (5-8), which faces St. Francis at 1:30 p.m. after its third straight late-game defeat in nine days.
"We have to learn from this and grow," said Palatine coach Eric Millstone. "The kids do a nice job to put themselves in position to close out games but we need to make a big play at the end of the game."
After Kern tied it at 38-38 on a 3 with 1:31 left, Palatine responded as sophomore Michael Orris sliced into the lane and found Galvan for a right-corner 3 at 1:21.
O'Toole, who was kept quiet by Jake Velinski for the first 12:06 after halftime, hit a driving jumper with 57 seconds left. Derek Babb deflected a midcourt inbound pass at 0:41 for Palatine's only turnover in the last 10 minutes and it led to O'Toole's go-ahead drive 12 seconds later.
"Our coach really stressed deflections before the game," said Kern, who missed the first seven games with a sprained right ankle. "We were trying to get in the passing lanes a little more and that led to better things on defense."
Especially when it was time to preserve the lead.
The Tigers used the two fouls they had to give and poked a ball out of bounds to push Palatine from inbounding under its own basket with 10.6 seconds left to the sideline about 30 feet from the basket with 4.2 seconds to play.
That forced the Pirates into a tough double-clutch 16-footer over two defenders by Orris that was short at the horn.
"I told the kids I thought the last 20 seconds they executed perfectly," Healy said.
"They did a nice job of managing the clock at the end of the game and did a nice job of executing," Millstone said. "When you're out of rhythm (like that) you need someone to step up and make a play."