St. Francis earns consolation against Montini
It's a battle of wills when Montini and St. Francis face each other, in any sport.
Monday at York's Jack Tosh Holiday Classic boys basketball tournament it was a battle of styles.
Playing for a berth in the consolation championship, Montini threatened to make it an up-tempo contest that would favor the Broncos. St. Francis dabbled in transition but emphasized its bread-and-butter half-court game with solid results, a 64-59 Spartans win in Elmhurst.
St. Francis advanced to the consolation title at noon Tuesday against Palatine, a 49-45 winner over Lake Forest.
"They're trying to dictate tempo by pressing us and making us push the floor," said Spartans coach Erin Dwyer. "We want to do that, but we always want to be able to execute our half-court sets. That's the balancing act, and I thought we did a pretty good job with that."
It came down to the end. Montini (3-10) led 59-58 with 1:08 left in the fourth quarter on Andrew Stokes' long 2-point basket. St. Francis (8-5) reclaimed a lead with 56 seconds to play on Brendan Yarusso's jumper in the paint.
Neither team scored again until Sebastian Miller secured a loose ball in the Spartans' half-court and found Robert Nocek alone for an easy basket and 62-59 St. Francis lead with 18 seconds remaining.
Trying to get 20-point scorer Antoine Harris a 3-point shot, Montini turned the ball over. Miller clinched the Spartans win on two free throws.
"I feel like we pushed the ball a lot, we attacked," said Montini's Jalen McBride, who joined Stokes with 10 points. "We just had to knock some shots down and get a couple more stops, loose-ball possessions, 50-50 balls. We just need to clean some things up."
Montini periodically flustered St. Francis with pressure then flew down for layups or secondary 3s. St. Francis' 28-18 rebounding advantage, paced by Nocek, Miller, Danny Blank and T.J. McMillen, as well as interior passing in the half-court, regained composure each time.
"We just needed to slow down a little bit, find the right shot," said Nocek, who scored 20 points with 8 rebounds, 4 assists. Yarusso and Eric Welch scored 10 point apiece.
"Sometimes we'd just force up the wrong shot," Nocek said, "but toward the second half we started making that extra pass to get really great shots, like layups."
The pace limited Montini's firepower, which produced 82 points in its prior game against Conant.
"A lot of credit goes to one of my assistant coaches, Garrett Garcia," Dwyer said. "Basically he breaks down all of our scout film, gives us as many tips as we can possibly get and then it's up to the kids to go out and try to execute. And when we execute scouting reports defensively we usually do a pretty good job."
Montini assistant Mike Belcaster, speaking for coach Bob Lozano, found positives.
"I'm very proud of the boys," he said. "Coming into it they've been working hard in practice, battling a lot, a very young team. It's showing, the fundamentals coming together, the hard work they're putting in at practice."