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Lake Park stuns Benet in overtime

In December Lake Park's boys basketball team surged past last season's win total.

In March the Lancers are taking home hardware.

Rallying from a 5-point deficit with about a minute left in the fourth quarter, Lake Park forced overtime and pulled out Friday's 58-55 victory over Benet to win the Class 4A DeKalb regional championship.

The Redwings had a last-second chance to send the game to a second overtime, but a baseline 3-point attempt went off the mark.

"This is what we've worked for all season," said Lancers junior Trevor Montiel, who had 15 points. "Going into the season everyone thought we'd be a seven- or eight-win team, and we beat that by the Christmas tournament. It's just great to let everyone know we're a great team."

Seventh-seeded Lake Park (23-10) advances to Wednesday's Bartlett sectional semifinals to face No. 5 Downers Grove North, a winner over No. 3 Downers Grove South. Friday's victory avenges a 47-41 loss to Benet in the Wheaton Warrenville South MLK Tournament.

With just one senior in the starting lineup, two in the rotation and three on the team, some might say the Lancers are arriving early to their success story. But don't tell that to the players, who've now notched nearly four times the number of wins from last season.

"We know it's all or nothing," said Lancers junior Montrell Perry, who had 16 points. "Who knows what will happen? We might not be here next year. We're laying everything on the line and good things are happening."

Second-seeded Benet (24-8), a 20-game winner for the 10th straight season, led for most of the night and built its biggest advantage of 12 points midway through the second quarter. Lake Park fought back to tie it on one of Perry's four 3-pointers at the start the fourth quarter, but the Redwings used an 8-0 run to seize control again.

With only four minutes to work with, Lake Park began another rally. Perry and Joey Czaja each hit 3s and Luke Sgarbossa made a pair of free throws to tie it 48-48. Benet senior Kendrick Tchoua, who had a game-high 25 points and 9 rebounds, scored in the final minute but Sgarbossa, who had 10 points, answered with the tying bucket to force overtime.

"It was really a hard-fought game," said Benet coach Gene Heidkamp. "We knew it might come down to the wire. We knew how good they were and how tough they were. It really could have went either way, and they made some big plays down the stretch. Give them a lot of credit."

Perry hit another 3 and Max Ellenbecker split two free throws to push the Lancers to a 54-50 lead to start overtime. Tchoua's three-point play made it 57-55 and Perry split two free throws to set up Benet's final possession. The Redwings missed two 3-pointers, got an offensive rebound and called timeout with 0.6 on the clock. A third 3-pointer missed to seal Lake Park's third regional championship in the last five years.

"This one is really special, just being the first year with a lot of juniors," said first-year Lancers coach Billy Pitcher. "But more so because Benet is just a really tough team."

Twitter: @kevin_schmit

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