Sweet finish for Lakes against Lake Zurich

A win, and some brownies.

Yep, Lakes coach Brian Phelan will have nothing but sweet memories of saying goodbye to his home court.

Phelan, who recently announced that he will hang up his clipboard at the end of the season to spend more time with his young family, was coaching in his last home game Tuesday night.

Thanks to four clutch free throws by Tyler Swindle over the final minute and a game-high 16 points from John Androus, his Eagles hung on to get a 47-45 North Suburban Conference crossover victory over Lake Zurich.

To celebrate, everyone then huddled around the bench and ate homemade brownies, courtesy of Phelan's wife, Tricia.

"I'm happy for brownies," said Swindle, a senior guard for the Eagles. "Coach (Phelan) actually made it all about us tonight because it was senior night. But we wanted to win for him, too. This was special for him."

The win was also special for Lakes because it pushes its winning streak to four games in a row. The Eagles are now 13-17 on the season heading into state tournament action next week.

Lake Zurich, which got 15 points from Marko Grcic and 14 points from Aaron Lewandowski, drops to 3-24 on the season.

"It's also nice to get a crossover win," said Phelan, who has been at the helm for five years and is the only coach the Lakes boys program has ever known. "Those are few and far between. We had to really work hard because their strength gave us fits.

"But I thought we made some good decisions at the critical times."

For much of the game, it didn't seem like there would be any critical times for Lakes. The Eagles were in fairly firm control, up by as many as 9 points in the second quarter and by 11 points in the third quarter.

"At the beginning of the ball game, it looked like we didn't even want to be in the gym," said Lake Zurich coach John Zarr, whose team shot a mere 20 percent from the floor in the first half and was limited to just 5 second-quarter points. "We had no desire or effort to play and that showed. The game was lost in the first three minutes and we never made it a sense of urgency until midway through the fourth quarter and by that time it put pressure on every possession and we're not good enough to handle that."

Lake Zurich took its first lead since early in the first quarter when junior guard Colin Rathe strung together five straight points, including a 3-pointer.

With 1:21 left in the game, Lake Zurich went up 42-41 after starting the quarter down by 6 points.

But that's when the Eagles started making free throws. In addition to Swindle, Marcell KirkmanBey also had a couple of key makes at the line.

Lakes would have finished with a bit more breathing room but Rathe (12 points) drilled a desperation 3-pointer, which banked in, as the buzzer sounded.

"We're going to (send Phelan out) with a championship in regionals," said Swindle, who scored 5 points on 5-of-6 free throws. "We're going strong right now with four straight wins and we hope to continue that in regionals."