Obendorf, Metea advance to Hinsdale South final

For more than three quarters Thursday night Sandburg did a nice job on Metea Valley star Kenny Obendorf, and it looked like the Mustangs’ perfect season would come to an end.

But not even a 10-point deficit with 5:51 left to play in the Hinsdale South Holiday Tournament semifinals was enough to stop Obendorf from shooting down another opponent and helping his team reach the final with a thrilling 66-62 victory over the Eagles.

Obendorf had a quiet 9 points through three quarters and Sandburg (6-5) built a 51-41 lead after Nick Lehnerer slashed his way to the rim for a layup. But Metea’s Milan Bojanic answered with a big 3-pointer, and then Obendorf went on a scoring rampage that started with back-to-back 3-pointers from the corner and ended with a free throw with 4.2 seconds left that sealed the come-from-behind victory.

All told, the 6-foot-2 forward made 5 of 6 shots in the fourth quarter — including three 3s — and tallied 16 of his game-high 23 points in the final five minutes of action.

“He’s a very good player and he’s shooting a ridiculous percentage at this tournament,” Sandburg coach Todd Allen said after Obendorf ended his team’s shot at winning the tourney. “We knew going in and we prepared. We just didn’t execute down the stretch and they did.”

Mustangs coach Bob Vozza, whose 12-0 team will face Schaumburg for the championship at 7:45 p.m. Friday, would love to see his team play the way it did late for much longer stretches.

“We’re trying to get those spurts of good things that we do have over a period of four quarters,” he said. “Obviously, we didn’t get it tonight. We’re trying to teach them that if they put that all together, this can be a pretty special group.”

Obendorf and his teammates had to be special in the fourth quarter because the Eagles played a solid three-plus quarters, using a balanced attack led by Lehnerer’s 18 points to lead for much of the contest. After a 20-20 first quarter, Sandburg led 36-31 at the half and by 10 points at times in both the third and fourth quarters.

It was a team effort on defense that powered Metea’s comeback and also was not just Obendorf who came up big on offense in the 25-point final quarter. TreSean Mackey was a perfect 4 of 4 from the line, Ryan Solomon added four foul shots and it was Bojanic’s clutch 3-pointer that started the rally.

“We need to come out a little bit better, but we were able to rebound,” Obendorf said. “We had a lot of lapses on defense, but once we picked that up we got it going.”