Lisle loses at the buzzer

With Lisle and visiting Wilmington deadlocked at 47 with nine seconds to play in Friday night’s Interstate Eight Conference Small Division tilt, Wildcats coach Matt Hines called time out to set up a final play.

The play’s first two options were either a jumper from the wing or a pass to the post. When the Lions bottled up both of those choices, regulation was destined to end one of two ways: with the teams preparing for overtime, or with someone stepping up and making a play.

That someone was Wilmington’s Dan Kulpa.

Finding himself 22 feet from the basket with three seconds left, Kulpa faked a 3-pointer and then drove through the heart of the Lisle defense, laying the ball in as the buzzer sounded to give the Wildcats a 49-47 victory.

“I don’t know how Dan Kulpa ended up with the ball out there, but I’m glad he did,” Hines said. “He’s a drive-first player, so he shot-faked and got to the rim and laid it in.”

“We wanted to stay down and we just fell for the shot fake and the kid made the shot,” said Lisle coach Mark LaScala. “But that’s what happens in games like this; there’s 100 plays that could’ve made a one-point difference, and that’s what makes it so hard to sleep after these kinds of games.”

Wilmington (3-4, 1-2) spent the bulk of the night chasing the Lions. On three occasions in the first two-plus quarters the Lions (2-6, 0-3) — thanks to 16 points from Kazim Khan, including a thunderous dunk in traffic that had the gym rocking — opened 8-point leads, but each time Wilmington trimmed the deficits to 1 or 2 and just couldn’t get over the hump.

That is, until five minutes remained in the third quarter. At that point six consecutive Lions points had resulted in a 34-26 advantage. It appeared to be déjà vu.

But this time, paced by 6 points from Dan O’Leary, 4 from Lee Oehmen and a 3-pointer from Nick Anderson, the Wildcats responded with a 14-0 run to take a 40-34 lead with six minutes to play.

At that point the Lions had gone seven minutes without scoring, but Khan’s layup broke the drought before his free throw put them ahead 43-42. O’Leary answered with 5 straight Wilmington points, but overtime became a distinct possibility when Lisle’s Cam Bell drained a 3-pointer with 30 seconds to play to tie the game.

“I really thought the game got away from us in the third quarter when they controlled the glass, got offensive rebound opportunities and we were one-and-done,” LaScala said. “In the last three minutes, we did a good job increasing the pressure and got Cam’s big 3. Overall, I’m pleased with the effort, but we need to improve our execution.”