Meadows digs out tough OT win
Falling behind Leyden by 9 points with less than 2½ minutes to play could have caused Rolling Meadows to look ahead Saturday night.
The Mustangs could have mentally checked out of the nonconference boys basketball game and started to conserve their energy for Wednesday's Mid-Suburban League title game at Schaumburg.
That didn't happen as Leyden provided an opening with its inability to finish off the game at the free-throw line. Meadows (16-9) took advantage as it forced overtime and pulled out a stunning 62-56 victory at Farina Field House in Franklin Park.
"Way deep in our bodies," senior point guard Brian Nelms said of how far Meadows had to dig down a night after a draining loss to Prospect.
"This is a real big, big momentum shift for us," said Meadows senior Michael Rose, who had 14 points and 7 rebounds before fouling out with 2:02 left in overtime. "Coming off (Friday) night we really needed this."
Nelms scored 13 of his game-high 21 points in the final 9:04. His 3-pointer with 22 seconds left in regulation tied it at 54-54 and his 2 free throws 12 seconds into overtime put Meadows ahead to stay at 56-54 with its first lead since midway through the second quarter.
"I thought our kids showed a lot of tenacity and grit," said Meadows coach Kevin Katovich.
A 16-point spark off the bench by Jonny Woolf, 12 points and 4 rebounds from Brian MacNamera and a driving 3-point play by Alex Herrera (20 points) put Leyden (15-10) up 51-42 with 2:39 left in regulation.
But the Eagles missed 7 of 8 free throws and the front end of two 1-and-1s the last 2:09. That included two misses to win it with 3.8 seconds left.
"You can't win games against good teams doing that," said Leyden coach Bill Heisler. "I felt we played pretty well but we just couldn't close it out."
John Ott hit a 3 with 1:23 left in regulation, Nelms made all 8 of his free throws and found Rose for a pair of layups and Mike Dolan had 3 key offensive rebounds in the 20-5 closing tear. Dolan's fifth assist to Brian Sabal for a layup made it 60-56 at 1:02 as Leyden missed all 9 of its overtime shots.
"We needed to step it up on defense and toward the end we started to do that," Nelms said. "Hopefully it carries over so we can make a run the next couple of weeks."