Fremd, Glenbrook North advance to semifinals at Wheeling
Daniel Ko helped Fremd light up a huge fourth quarter spurt as the Vikings pulled away from St. Viator 55-45 Thursday night in the quarterfinals of the 45th annual Wheeling Hardwood Classic.
Fremd (9-4) will meet Glenbrook North in Friday’s semifinals at 8:45 p.m.
Ko scored all of eight of his points in the fourth quarter as the Lîons overcame 17 turnovers for the win.
“I just did my thing,” Ko said. “I just tried to get my teammates open and then make shots when I had a chance.”
Viator began the game by forcing four Fremd turnovers before the Vikings could score a point. But despite eight first quarter turnovers, Viator led just 15-11 at the end of the period.
Fremd finally found its footing and the Vikings exploded for eight unanswered points to surge ahead 19-15 on a basket by Sam Hirsch.
Viator closed out the half on a 7-3 run with Brandyn Michaels and Henry Marshall each knocking down a three-pointer.
With the game tied at 24-24, each team put together 8-0 runs.
First it was Viator which got a free throw from Joey Hernandez, a basket by Michaels, and a three-pointer and then two free throws from Hernandez.
Then Viator countered with a basket by Jordan Williams, a three-point play by Hirsch, and a three-pointer by James Moffett.
Viator pulled ahead 39-36 with 7:24 left on a free throw Marshall.
That's when Ko and Fremd took over.
Ko’s basket sparked another 8-0 run that would end up turning into an 18-3 scoring blast as the Vikings would pull away,
“We had a slow start offensively,” Fremd coach Bob Widlowski said. “But we had a very nice second half. I thought Ko and (Erik) Stanson were huge sparks for us. We had too many turnovers in the first half and that's not how we want to play and we corrected it.”
Williams led Fremd with 18 points and 13 rebounds while Hirsch finished with 7 points.
Viator (8-5) was led Michaels, who had 13 points, Marshall with 12 and Dayvion Ellis with six.
“We missed a lot of open looks in that second quarter,” St. Viator coach Michael O’Keeffe said. “In the third quarter, I thought we played great. But in the fourth quarter we went ice cold.”
Glenbrook North 66, Libertyville 38: Glenbrook North (13-1) got a sense of revenge after losing to Libertyville in the tournament championship game last year.
This year, Libertyville (6-8) ran into a buzzsaw in the quarterfinal matchup Thursday night. Top-seeded Glenbrook North scored the game’s first 10 points and never looked back as they built a 36-16 halftime lead.
“Their pressure caused us lots of issues tonight,” Libertyville coach Brian Zyrkowski said. “The way they came out was not unexpected. But we learned a lot tonight. We learned that we have to get better in a lot of areas.”
Libertyville was led by Jacob Bahrani, who had 7 points, Kyle Anderson with six points and Ryan Thompson’s five points. Glenbrook North was led by Sam Lappin, who had 19 points, Patrick Schaller who had 8 points and Owen Giannoulias, who had 7 points.