Bizarre finish to South Elgin triumph

South Elgin’s first basketball regional championship will be remembered for a long time to come.

So will the way the final 2.4 seconds played out Friday night in St. Charles.

Two clutch free throws by Bartlett’s Femi Oyewole (9 points, 9 rebounds, 3 blocked shots) put the Hawks on top 33-32 with 2.4 seconds remaining.

When Matt Chaltin intercepted a half-court pass from South Elgin’s Dillon Gardner near the scorer’s table and got fouled with 1.5 seconds left, it looked like the third-seeded Hawks were headed for their second consecutive regional title victory over the top-seeded Storm (16-12).

That’s when the bizarre final 1.5 seconds took more than 5 minutes to unfold.

After Chaltin was fouled, several Hawks players rushed the court with one member of the bench running all the way across the court to celebrate with the Bartlett student section.

Officials huddled briefly before meeting with both teams’ coaches near midcourt. A bench technical was called on the Hawks, and a pair of free throws by sophomore guard Jake Maestranzi sealed South Elgin’s incomparable 33-32 Class 4A St. Charles East regional title triumph.

“I’ve never been part of anything like that before,” said Maestranzi, who scored a team-leading 9 points for the Storm, who will face Rockford Auburn in Wednesday’s sectional semifinals at Jacobs. “We weren’t capitalizing on our free throws and I was just fortunate enough to get two more chances.”

Before Maestranzi converted the two foul shots, the Storm hadn’t scored a single point in the fourth quarter as head coach Chaz Taft elected to spread the court after his team’s 31-25 third-quarter lead.

“We weren’t stalling,” said Taft, whose team stretched its lead to 6 on Maestranzi’s third-quarter, buzzer-beating 3-pointer. “We just wanted a layup. We had a six-point lead and we wanted to get a layup. But we started fumbling the ball around a little bit and got a little nervous.”

After 5-plus minutes of scoreless play, Bartlett tallied the first 7 points of the final period, capped by Oyewole’s free throws that gave the Hawks their first lead since the midway point of the opening quarter.

The ensuing final seconds will be forever etched in the South Elgin and Bartlett annals.

“That’s why they call it survive and advance,” said Taft. “You never know what’s going to happen. He (the Bartlett player) left the bench and they had to call it. He was up in the crowd.

“It’s a heated rivalry and emotions run high,” added Taft. “I don’t know what else to say?”

Bartlett coach Jim Wolfsmith took full blame for what transpired over the wild and wacky final seconds.

“That one is on me,” said Wolfsmith. “It’s not on the kids who ran on the floor. I failed to tell my kids to hold their seats and let the game play out.

“The reality is that we played well enough in the fourth quarter to take care of business. We should have taken care of business, craziness ensued and we had to pay the price for it. After Matt got the steal and the foul was called, I think everyone assumed that the clock had run out and that’s why we were moving around the way we were. But the buzzer never sounded.”

Sophomore Lance Whitaker led the Hawks with 11 points.

“We fought until the end but we got unlucky at the end of the game,” said Whitaker. “It’s an emotional game, especially with these two teams. It’s hard to control yourself sometimes.”

For Maestranzi, whose four older brothers all attended Bartlett, the feeling was a euphoric one.

“It’s really special,” he said.