Mustangs fall again

A pair of homecomings didn't have happy endings for Rolling Meadows.

Glenn Olson became the second straight coach to bring his team to his alma mater and leave with a victory. His first-year Maine East boys basketball team survived a late rally and pulled away to a 63-56 nonconference victory.

"We are becoming a confident basketball team," said Olson, a Daily Herald All-Area guard in 1994. "At times we've played real well and now we're starting to become a complete basketball team."

The Demons (15-7) never trailed after the first 1:11 as they shot 57.1 percent from the field (28-for-49). And when they did miss they cleaned up with 7 rebound baskets -- four by 6-foot-4 senior Avery Roche (19 points, 13 rebounds).

"We absolutely got pounded on the boards," said Meadows coach Kevin Katovich of a 31-21 deficit. "We had a lot of breakdowns where we didn't get back on 'D' and didn't rebound."

Meadows (11-10) was trying to rebound from consecutive games where it lost late leads. That included Saturday night's overtime heartbreaker to Niles West, coached by Olson's old classmate Fritz Wulfram.

But this time the Mustangs fought an uphill battle from a 42-32 deficit with Kevin Serna out (sprained ankle). A layup by Stan Pheteau, just back from a football injury, and tip-in by Joe Okon sparked a rally.

A layup by Will Trunk (13 points, three 3-pointers), a 3 and 3 free throws by Kyle Gaedele (16 points) and two 3s by Ty Kirk (16 points) got Meadows within 51-50 with 3:10 left.

But after a Gaedele steal, Kirk missed 2 free throws at 2:45 and Trunk missed a 3. Junior guard Dwight Davis (9 points) and junior Danhi Wilson (20 points, 7 rebounds) sliced the lane for layups and Roche's rebound basket made it 57-50 with 1:07 left.

"We stayed focused and kept on attacking," Roche said. "We weren't really worried. We were real confident.

"We've been in that situation before. We've just got to finish the ballgame the same way we started."

Maine East, which also got 15 points from sophomore Charles McKinney, also beat Hoffman Estates 67-57 on Saturday after losing an 11-point fourth-quarter lead and game to Deerfield on Friday.

"The best thing I could say is we learned from our losses," Olson said. "We stopped attacking offensively (Friday) … and we just had that attack mentality (Tuesday)."