Kessel Heat place second at AAU national tourney

In roughly 20 years of existence, the Lake County-based Kessel Heat has never had a basketball team reach this level of success.

Last month, the Kessel 14-under boys team took second place at the Division I AAU national championship in Orlando. The title game was an All-Midwest battle, with Milwaukee-based Ray Allen Select winning 54-50. The Heat beat teams from Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma to reach the championship.

"We got out to an early lead, then our big guy got in foul trouble and we were down heading into the fourth quarter," said 14U coach Kyle Kessel, a former star at Mundelein High School. "We started trapping, tied it up with about three minutes left, but fell short."

Kessel said his travel team's previous best finish at AAU nationals was sixth place, but that was in Division 2. Kessel credited 6-6 center Scotty Ebube for rising to the occasion in Florida.

"It just clicked in for him," Kessel said. "He just turned into a monster. He was getting 12 to15 rebounds, 8 or 9 blocks."

The players on this team will be freshmen in high school this fall. Ebube will attend Mundelein. Kessel said point guard Kimarhi Wilson (Carmel) reminded him of former Mundelein teammate Sean Stackhouse, a quick guard who can score.

Kessel credit Conor Enright (Mundelein) for doing the dirty work and said guard Trey Baker (Stevenson) played like a younger version of Boston Celtics all-star Isaiah Thomas.

The rest of the roster included Blake Ellingson (Libertyville), 3-point specialist Brent Wolff (Hersey), Amar Aguillard (Zion-Benton) and Kyonte Thomas (Bolingbrook).