Boys Basketball: Homewood-Flossmoor rallies past Joliet West
By Michael O’Brien mobrien@suntimes.com December 1, 2012 12:32AM
Rashaan Surles moves down court past Joliet West's Carl Terrell. | Patrick Gleason~For Sun-Times Media
Article Extras
Updated: January 3, 2013 10:56AM
Homewood-Flossmoor coach Jim McLaughlin says senior Maurius Hill “plays with his heart.”
Take one look at Hill’s 6-foot-5, 220-pound muscle-bound frame, then picture that athletic mass playing with his heart. That’s what Joliet West ran up against in the final four minutes Friday.
The No. 1 Tigers led by eight with 4:29 to play, but Hill led an intense final defensive push that propelled the Vikings to a 56-53 win in Joliet.
“Games like this make you tougher, you have to get tougher playing in a game like that,” Hill said.
West managed just one field goal in the final 3:56 of the game.
Hill finished with 13 points and 10 rebounds. Senior guard Rashaan Surles led H-F with 14 points and six rebounds. His two free throws with eight seconds to play sealed the win.
“H-F’s kids played really hard,” West coach Luke Yaklich said. “For Nov. 30, it was a heck of a ballgame.”
The Vikings outsized West at every position, but somehow the Tigers outrebounded H-F 41-37.
“If you would have told me before the game that we would outrebound them I would have thought we won by five or six,” Yaklich said. “But the turnovers just killed us, that was the story of the game.”
The Tigers (4-1, 0-1 Southwest Suburban Blue) turned the ball over 20 times and had real difficulty scoring.
“What it boils down to is that H-F got about 16 points off of 10 turnovers,” Yaklich said. “We had no defense to guard it.”
West senior Morris Dunnigan already is in the midst of a resurgent season. He scored a game-high 22 points and grabbed five rebounds. But aside from Dunnigan and three-pointers by Carl Terrell (15 points), the West offense relied on second-chance points and free throws to score.
Andre Hardy, a 6-7 senior, was the key to West’s rebounding effort. He finished with three points and a game-high 12 rebounds.
“I love our seniors,” Yaklich said. “They have done everything that we have asked throughout their careers. They have put themselves in a position to win a lot of games this season.”
Tai Odiase, a 6-8 junior, scored 12 off the bench for the Vikings. His slam with 1:32 to play gave H-F (5-0, 1-0) the lead for the first time in the fourth quarter. The Vikings never relinquished it.
