Boys basketball: Schaumburg stays hot, avenges loss to Hoffman Estates
Friday evening's Mid-Suburban West battle between Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates was a good example of the concept of compare and contrasting two teams.
On one side were the host Saxons who came into the game winners of 8 of their last 11 with those losses coming to the top two teams in the MSL West, Fremd and Barrington, and the third coming to state-ranked Benet.
Meanwhile, the visiting Hawks made the short two mile trek to Schaumburg coming off a huge MSL West win over two-time defending West and MSL conference champion Palatine earlier in the week. They hoped that served as a new source of fuel that during the holidays produced a six-game win streak which included capturing the Maine East Holiday tournament title.
That same conceptualization led to a tale of two halves of hoops. The first saw the hosts get off to a double-digit halftime advantage only to see the visiting team use a pair of second-half surges to make a near-comeback that would fall just a little short as Schaumburg hung on for a 50-45 victory on its home floor in front of a near-capacity crowd.
The result moved both squads to overall marks of 17-8.
"It was a good win for us," third-year Saxon coach Jason Tucker said. "We had a great first half for us defensively. (Hoffman) Coach (Peter) McBride did a great job of adjusting in the second half but tonight we were a little bit better than them. Just a little bit."
In building a 24-13 halftime lead, Schaumburg (3-5 in MSL West play) held the Hawks (2-6 in the West) to just 5-26 (19 percent) from the floor as senior guard Jordan Tunis scored 9 of team-high 14 over the final 3:41 of quarter one topped off by a buzzer-beating triple.
After a Zion Young trey made it 27-15 just 53 ticks into the third, Hoffman would go on a 9-0 tear that brought them within 27-24 on a Torrey Baskin three with 1:44 left in the period. The Saxons went on a 9-1 counter-response that 6-5 junior forward Cam Anderson finished off with a three-point play just 14 seconds into the final stanza that put Schaumburg up 36-25.
However, the Hawks made another comeback with a 9-3 run that brought them within 43-42 on 2 of senior guard DaQuan Daniels’ game-high 22 with 2:02 left.
It was there that Anderson (8 points, 4 Rebounds) took a feed from fellow junior teammate Ray Black with 66 seconds left that turned the tide in Schaumburg's favor for good as it followed that basket with a 5-of-6 effort at the foul line featuring a pair by Anderson himself.
"We practice free throws everyday in practice and it proved to be huge in getting the win," Anderson said. "It always comes down to who works and practices the hardest like coach told us. We're pretty happy (with) where we're at. We could be better, but we treat everyday like it's our last game."
Six-3 senior forward Nate Cleveland added 8 points for Hoffman.
"Credit to them (Schaumburg). They came out ready to play and we came out a little flatter than we would've liked," McBride said.
"We kind of dug ourselves a hole that was difficult to come back from. We felt we were really stagnant in the first half so we wanted to get the ball going a little bit and get the game in a pace (that) we were a little bit more comfortable with."