Chicagoland Jewish stuns Westminster for regional title

Collasping on Ian Dutcher and forcing the outside shooters to beat you is the way to defeat the Westminster Chrisitian boys basketball team.

Chicagoland Jewish did that nearly to perfection Thursday night.

The third-seeded Tigers avenged a 17-point loss earlier this month to the Warriors by beating top seed Westminster, 44-39, in the Class 1A Westminster Christian regional title game in Elgin.

"That's the way to beat us," Warriors coach Bruce Firchau said. "Very few teams can execute the way they did against us this year."

Dutcher, a 6-foot-8 junior, scored 30 points in the Warriors' 60-43 victory over the Tigers on Feb. 2. On Thursday, Chicagoland Jewish used a 3-2 zone and dropped off the players on the outside in an attempt to keep the ball out of Dutcher's hands. Dutcher scored just 8 points, on 4-for-4 shooting, in the first three quarters. He added 8 points in the fourth to finish with a game-high 16 when the Warriors (21-9) were trying to rally from an 11-point deficit.

"We were watching for the entry pass and double-teaming underneath to make it harder to make the entry pass," Tigers coach Saul Shaoul said.

Westminster's outside shooters struggled to pick up the slack, going 1-for-12 from behind the 3-point arc with the one coming on the Warriors' first attempt in the first quarter from Brandon Cork.

"They played really hard and with a lot of heart," Dutcher said. "I don't think we came as serious as we needed to come out."

The Warriors led 18-12 after Ryan Beachler hit a pair of free throws with 2:19 left in the first half. That's when the trouble began. The Tigers (13-8), who won their first regional championship, scored the final 4 points of the half and then outscored Westminster 12-2 in the third quarter to take a 28-20 lead entering the fourth.

The Tigers' run continued into the fourth, scoring the first 3 points to cap a 16-2 run over 13:12 to take a 31-20 advantage. The lone basket for the Warriors between Beachler's 2 free throws and Ben Carani's driving layup with 5:07 left in the fourth was a basket from Dutcher with 6:15 remaining in the third quarter.

"You can't win a regional championship game when you do that," said Firchau, who saw his team turn the ball over 17 times. "That really hurt us."

Westminster got within 3, 42-39, with 13.1 seconds left thanks to the Tigers going just 8-for-15 from the free-throw line in the fourth. But the Warriors never got a chance to tie the game.

Dutcher added 9 rebounds. Beachler finished with 12.

Aaron Cohn led the Tigers with 12 points.