Delaquila’s getting it done for Mundelein
The kid who looks like he could be from California wound up playing like he was back in California on Friday night.
Beach-blond shooting guard Dylan Delaquila played some of his best basketball of the season last week during Mundelein’s holiday trip to San Diego.
The junior reserve got on a roll, hit a bunch of big shots and saw his playing time steadily increase.
“I started getting hot out there and hitting all my shots,” Delaquila said with a smile. “I just kept playing more and more.”
Same thing happened in Mundelein’s first game back in Illinois: a North Suburban Conference Lake Division showdown at Libertyville.
Libertyville was down by 18 points at halftime, but cut its deficit to just 2 points early in the fourth quarter.
Just as the home fans woke up and started getting noisy, Delaquila unleashed a silencer by hitting a 3-pointer that pushed Mundelein’s lead back up to 5 points. A few possessions later, he rolled up 3 points the old-fashioned way and that put the Mustangs back up by double-digits and in control for good.
Delaquila, whose hot hand kept him on the floor for most of the fourth quarter, finished with 11 points as Mundelein pulled away for a 76-64 victory over Libertyville.
The Mustangs, who got a team-high 18 points from junior guard Robert Knar and 15 points from junior forward Sean O’Brien, improve to 15-3 overall and 3-1 in the Lake while Libertyville drops to 10-4 overall and 2-2 in the division.
“Dylan was huge,” Mundelein coach Dick Knar said of Delaquila, who scored 9 of his 11 points in the fourth quarter. “He played great out in California. He had a couple of games where he had 3 3-pointers and his defense was tough so he just moved himself more into the rotation.
“We needed something. Dylan’s baskets in the fourth were huge because we were really struggling to score all during the third.”
As Libertyville was rolling up the points in the third quarter, systematically slicing and dicing up its deficit, the Mustangs went cold.
Mundelein scored only 5 points in the quarter. Its 41-23 halftime lead had shrunk to a 46-42 lead by the start of the fourth quarter.
In addition to its tough defense, Libertyville got back into the game with the relentless play of senior guard Griffin Pils. Pils tallied 13 of his game-high 26 points in the third quarter.
A putback by senior forward Luke Mathewson and 2 free throws by Pils put Libertyville within a bucket (48-46) just a minute into the fourth quarter.
“We started being more patient on offense,” said Pils, who scored all but 2 of his 26 points in the second half. “We felt like if we moved the ball around, we could get the shots that we really wanted. We did that in the third quarter but then I think our emotions got too high in the fourth and we just started forcing stuff.”
Delaquila’s monster 3-pointer that served as the buzzkill during Libertyville’s big comeback began a 17-4 run for Mundelein.
Delaquila scored a second 3-pointer during that stretch, in addition to his and-one.
“They bring guys off the bench who are all tough to guard,” Libertyville coach Scott Bogumil said of Mundelein. “We had three straight possessions to (take the lead) and we came up empty and then the blond guy (Delaquila) hit that 3-pointer and that was it. That was like the dagger. We couldn’t get over the hump after that.”
Libertyville also got 19 points out of senior guard Ellis Matthews, who had scored 13 of those points by halftime. For Mundelein, senior guard Nate Brune finished with 9 points, all on 3-pointers, while senior guard Jordan Wiegold and sophomore guard Nate Williams each added 8 points.