Sutrinaitis, Hersey face big teste in Warren

Tom Sutrinaitis laughed about becoming Hersey’s hero on Wednesday night when he had just 1 point more than zero as time was winding down against St. Viator.

A rebound basket by the 6-foot-5 Sutrinaitis just before the overtime buzzer gave him 3 points and Hersey a 52-50 Class 4A regional semifinal victory at Wheeling.

“Everyone (at school) was telling me I did a great job,” Sutrinaitis said, “even though I didn’t.”

But the eighth-seeded Huskies (16-11) will need a few more rebounds from Sutrinaitis when they play top-seed Warren (26-3) today at 7:30 p.m. for a regional title. It will literally be a big challenge for Sutrinaitis, Stefan Vucicevic and Justin Jobski against 6-6 Darius Paul, 6-8 Nathan Boothe and 6-5 Jeremiah Jackson.

“We have to make sure we close out on everyone,” said Sutrinaitis, who is averaging 11.5 points a game for the balanced Huskies.

“It’s an exciting challenge,” said Hersey coach Steve Messer. “Our kids have to believe in what we do — close out properly, run the offense and spread the court and attack and play fearless.

“They’re physically superior but they’re still high school kids. It’s one night. We don’t play a series of five.”

Messer said Hersey didn’t play well Wednesday but didn’t lose its toughness. The play of senior guard and scoring leader Connor Miklasz (13 ppg) has helped fuel a three-game winning streak.

Miklasz’s 20 points against Viator included a third-quarter buzzer-beater from just inside midcourt.

“Without putting it all on him, when we went into that funk he was forcing shots and turning it over and not getting a lot of assists,” Messer said. “He ironed that out and as a team we played really well for three quarters against Fremd (64-58 win).

“He kind of had to take over (Wednesday) because we just weren’t playing well. And only 1 or 2 shots were forced and that’s a good thing.”

Beating Fremd, Central Suburban League champion Niles North and Mid-Suburban League champion Prospect has displayed the Huskies’ capability.

“Even without those wins we’re pretty confident as a team,” said Sutrinaitis, who is ranked eighth in his class with a 33 ACT and hopes to play football and basketball in college. “Our chemistry is better than ever right now. It has just kind of culiminated over the entire year.

“We’ve worked through hard practices and it has brought us closer. We’re confident in this game and it’s a matter of execution at the end.”

Hersey and Sutrinaitis would gladly take another finish similar to Wednesday.

Recapturing Warrior pride: Maine West wanted to become a team that couldn’t be taken lightly again after four straight losing seasons.

District rival Maine South would attest to the degree of difficulty involved in beating the Warriors twice this season.

The first required overtime at Thanksgiving and the second in Tuesday night’s Class 4A regional semifinal saw Maine South finally pull away in the last minute of a 45-38 win.

The Warriors’ 17-11 finish matched the 2005-06 team for the best seasons in coach Erik McNeill’s seven-year tenure.

“I thought we did a nice job of doing what we needed to do,” McNeill said. “At the beginning of the year we wanted to be a team that other teams had to scout and prepare for and I thought we did that. We made a nice run at Maine South.”

The highlight win included beating Central Suburban North champion and 20-game winner Niles North in December.

“I felt like we ended on a good note,” said Maine West senior Odera Eneogwe, who is considering Carroll and Roosevelt as his top college choices. “We’re down about the loss but we still have to keep our heads up.”

And the Warriors have a nice junior nucleus back that includes scoring leader and two-year starter Conor Hart, 3-point threat Kevin Garcia and improving 6-9 inside presence Cody Zimmerman.

Sophomore callup Tom Kukec also showed his confidence and ability by hitting and taking some big 3s down the stretch Tuesday against Maine South.

“He’s a very good shooter and he’ll be really good next year,” Eneogwe said. “Look out for him. He has no fear.”

The unfortunate late-season loss of senior Paul Solka to a broken nose which required two surgeries opened up the door for Kukec.

“He just did a great job,” McNeill said. “It would have been foolish not to put him in the game the way he was knocking down shots against us in practice.”

Eight is enough to decide ESCC? Member schools of the East Suburban Catholic Conference voted to reduce the boys basketball league schedule from 12 games to eight for next season.

The ESCC dropped from 10 teams to nine for boys sports when St. Joseph left after last season for the Chicago Catholic League. It has long had an imbalanced schedule where schools faced some opponents once and others twice.

“Some teams felt the imbalance of who they were playing twice was a problem,” said Viator athletic director Tim Carlson, whose school was opposed to the reduction plan. “Did it determine a true champion if it was imbalanced? I can’t say if it did or it didn’t.

“The Big Ten has an imbalanced schedule. All the years we played St. Joseph and St. Pat’s and Notre Dame twice a year, nobody thought anything of it.”

Now Carlson and Joe Majkowski, the dean of ESCC coaches in his 24th year, have to find four additional nonconference games for next season. Carlson doesn’t want to play ESCC teams in nonconference games and did not support a double round-robin, 16-team league schedule, which would have left only two open dates for nonconference opponents.

“We’ll find some teams that will be beneficial for us … and we still need to play some local teams,” Carlson said.

Carlson also said the loss of St. Joseph to a nine-team league “changed the way we do business.” The result in football is every team has a different open week to find a nonconference game — which is Week 6 for Viator next season.

Not an easy start: Wheeling’s 7-20 season was mirrored in its 57-50 loss to St. Viator on Monday.

The Wildcats rallied from a 17-5 deficit after a quarter to within 2 points in the third quarter. They fell behind by 9 points wiht 3:03 to go but had a chance to get within 2 points in the final 20 seconds.

“What I’m most proud of is we had a lot of ups and lot of downs with this team, but they continued to battle and gave us everything they had,” said first-year Wheeling coach John Clancy. “It would have been easy to fold when we had a 10-game losing streak, but they continued to persevere and that’s a tribute to the seniors.”

That class scored all but 6 points Monday — Tyler Shapiro and Riley Harvey had 11 apiece, Nick Boyd had 8 and Ricky Schwind and Matt Hart each scored 7 points. Billy Jamie also had 6 rebounds.

Schwind finished as one of the area’s top 3-point shooters with 57.

Freshman Jeremy Stephani had the other points on a pair of 3s.

Eagles take flight: Leyden arguably hit bottom when it droppped to 5-11 overall and 2-4 in the West Suburban Gold with a 68-24 loss at Proviso East.

From there the Eagles went 6-6 overall and 3-3 in the league — including back-to-back double figure wins over Rolling Meadows and Morton.

And their progress was clear in two losses in the last week to Proviso East.

The Eagles trailed by just 5 points after three quarters before falling 61-52 last Friday. They led by a point at halftime in their 4A regional semifinal and trailed by 7 points with 3:50 to play before falling 80-58.

“We underachieved early and then we kind of got it going,” said Leyden coach Bill Heisler, whose dad died of throat cancer at Christmas-time. “I’m proud of the way they fought down the stretch. I thought we were playing pretty good basketball at the end of the year.

“It was a trying year but I’m proud of the kids’ effort.”

Heisler said the return of senior guard Carlos Olavarria from injury right after the 44-point Proviso East loss was a boost. The Eagles will have to replace versatile Brandon Stinson, but having juniors Alex Herrera and Patrick Listwan back will be another boost for next year.

Heisler joked that when Herrera missed two consecutive 3s on Tuesday it was the first time in a month he had that kind of “cold” streak. The 93 percent free-throw shooter made his last 25 of the season and is five shy of the program-record streak set in 1961 by future NBA coach Jimmy Rodgers.

“He shot the ball so well down the stretch,” Heisler said. “Pretty much everyone we saw face-guarded him and he overcame a lot to have the kind of year he did.”

Full Nelson: Lincoln senior Jordan Nelson, who is the second-most prolific career 3-point shooter in state history, torched downstate Morton early in the season for 37 points in an 80-52 win.

But in Tuesday night’s Lincoln 3A regional rematch, the top-seeded hosts barely exceeded Nelson’s first-game total and were knocked out in a 48-39 loss. Nelson didn’t score until late in the fourth quarter, finished with just 5 points of his 21.5 average and hit the final 3 of his career.

Nelson finished behind Washington’s Matt Roth (464 from 2004-08) for most career 3s. Roth and Canton’s Kevin Rhodes, No. 3 on the list with 371 from 1987-91, both played in the Mid-Illini Conference with Morton.

Fourth-seed Morton was hardly a surprise at 22-7 but did have to rally from an 18-point, second-half deficit in Monday’s regional opener to beat Springfield in overtime. Lincoln finished 25-6.

Super move to Waukegan: The renowned “Dog Pound” at Waukegan isn’t hosting a sectional this year but it won’t be devoid of March Madness. The school will host the 4A supersectional between the Barrington and New Trier sectional champions March 15.