Lake Forest's Hopfinger delivers against Stevenson
Lake Forest junior Mitch Hopfinger has paid dividends for the Scouts all season.
On Friday night at the Class 4A Stevenson regional final against the host Patriots, Hopfinger was money in the bank again for the Scouts.
After his 20-point, 6 rebound effort helped the Scouts to a 55-43 win over Stevenson earned the North Suburban Conference champions their first regional title in five years, Hopfinger was rewarded by his dad Frank with a smile, a hug and a little spending cash to celebrate with.
"It was just a little spending money," Hopfinger said with a sheepish grin.
The top-seeded Scouts advanced to the Waukegan sectional Tuesday night, where they will face No. 4 seed Warren, a 69-62 winner over Lake Zurich at the Lake Zurich regional.
"We got stops tonight when we needed to get them and made some big baskets when we had to," Hopfinger said. "Our defense was really solid too and that led to a lot of things on offense."
While the No. 9 seeded Patriots were focusing their attention on Michigan-bound senior Matt Vogrich, Hopfinger was proving to be an unstoppable force no matter who Stevenson coach Pat Ambrose selected to guard him.
"(Hopfinger) is really a tough matchup," Ambrose said. "He is a second big guard and we tried to put (Ryan) Chapman on him, then we tried Jeff (Levitt) and he was too big of a matchup for us."
Hopfinger did most of his damage as the Scouts began to pull away midway through the third quarter. The 6-foot-4 Hopfinger scored 8 straight points from the end of the third quarter into the early stages of the fourth period. His final bucket on a perfectly placed Vogrich pass put Lake Forest up 38-25 with 7:43 to go forcing a Stevenson timeout.
"We really ran great offense as a team tonight," Hopfinger said. "My teammates got me the ball in a lot of different spots and I was able to get open and take advantage."
Stevenson (17-11) didn't fold, as the Patriots climbed back into the contest on a 3-point-play from Grant Johnson (6 points) and a long 3-pointer from Levitt (5 points). The mini-burst trimmed the margin to 7 on five separate occasions in the final quarter, but never any closer.
"Stevenson is such a well-coached team," Lake Forest coach Phil LaScala said. "We were fortunate that they didn't shoot the ball well tonight, but boy did they defend us well tonight."
Lake Forest closed out the contest at the free-throw line and never let the lead dip below 7 points the rest of the night.
"We have been motivated all season by people picking against us," said Vogrich, who contributed 19 points and 7 boards. "Other people picked Zion to win the sectional and didn't think that we deserved the top seed, but here we are."
Senior Jeff Arenson led the Patriots in scoring in his final game with 13 points, all in the second half. Senior Henry Wood was dominant inside for Stevenson with 6 blocked shots, 4 steals and 8 rebounds.