Rivalry win: Hoffman Estates seals win over Conant with late 15-0 run
A short time after his team earned a nonconference home win over Marengo Tuesday night, Hoffman Estates coach Peter McBride took an opportunity for a review of his young hoop squad a third of the way through their season.
His team returned only a pair of players -- senior guard Trendell Whiting and junior forward Nate Cleveland -- with significant varsity experience from a winter ago.
“I really like the group we have. It’s a young group that’s going to grow (and) get better as we gain experience,” the third-year Hoffman mentor said. “We have some talent (that) we’re excited about. I just want this place to be a place where they’re proud to play basketball at. We’ve got some guys that are putting the work in to be good.”
McBride sought to see some positive results of their two days of practice prior to Friday evening’s trip down Higgins Road to face archrival Conant in the resumption of Mid-Suburban West play. The Hawks looked to stay in vision of the front of the divisional pack and perhaps be within a game of first place in the standings by night’s end.
While the second part of that goal didn’t materialize for McBride and his team, he could still take some pride in his unit’s 54-39 triumph at Perry Gym that moved Hoffman to 7-4 overall and 1-2 in the West.
“We thought we really showed a lot of resiliency tonight,” McBride said. “Credit to Conant for coming out and making us work for everything offensively. It’s never easy to get a clean look (at the basket) against them, so we had to really rely on getting stops, get the game at a pace that we were more comfortable with.”
In order to get those game settings just right, the Hawks had to rescind an early second half 7-point deficit as it fell behind 26-19 on a pair of stuffs by Cougars junior forward Bradley Biedke with the second coming at the 6:22 mark of the third.
At that point the visitors went on a decisive 12-4 run that gained them a permanent advantage on a Torey Baskin triple for a 31-30 lead with 95 seconds left in the quarter.
Hoffman’s lead would stand at 35-31 entering the fourth.
After an Austin Potocnic trey pulled the home team within 39-36 with 5:20 to play, the Hawks went on a game-sealing 15-0 run that put them up 54-36 on Baskin’s steal, drive and layup with 49 ticks left before a trey by senior Conant forward Nic Romano closed out the scoring.
Cleveland, whose 14-point, 8-rebound and 5-assist effort paved the winning Hoffman effort, gave plaudits to his teammates’ performance.
“I don’t care about stats -- none of that,” Cleveland said. “I’m just trying to get get a win and we got the win and that’s all that matters to me. Spread the wealth, (get) everybody involved, we had four people in double-figures. That’s team basketball right there.”
Senior guard D’marion Dunn joined Cleveland in double figures with 12 points followed by juniors Daiquan Daniels (11) and Baskin’s 10.
Six-foot-6 senior center Camden Lathos paced the home team with 11 points and 6 rebounds.