Steelmen rally comes up short against No. 1 FLOSSMOOR -- With a little more than 2 minutes remaining in the third quarter Friday night, Joliet Township High School trailed the state's No. 1-ranked team 42-23.
Homewood-Flossmoor was about ready to flip on the cruise control en route to claiming the championship of its Class 4A regional.
JT, though, is a far cry from the team H-F beat 77-48 on Jan. 18. The Steelmen refused to quit, finally dropping a 66-59 decision.
You could almost hear the collective "whew" from the Vikings' crowd when the final seconds ticked off.
JT (16-12) still trailed 57-41 with 4:08 left, yet it was still far from over.
With Joliet coach Luke Yaklich subbing multiple players for defense and offense on nearly every possession, Wesley Powell scored on a 5-foot runner, Matt Sturdivant made two free throws and Andre Thompson swished a 3-pointer after a turnover by H-F (27-1) to bring Joliet to within 57-48.
Powell then intercepted a pass intended for guard Kevin Dillard, the Chicago Sun-Times Player of the Year, at midcourt. Dillard reached over Powell as he made the interception and picked up his fifth foul. The JT faithful went berserk.
THE star on a team full of stars had to sit the final 2:29. Powell, meanwhile, made two free throws to slice the deficit to 57-50.
"When Dillard fouled out, that really built our momentum," said Sturdivant, JT's senior center who finished with 6 points and 6 rebounds. "We almost had a chance to win there."
How close did it get?
Russell Ellington, who along with H-F's Supo Sanni will attend the University of Illinois next fall on a football scholarship, drove coast-to-coast and drew a blocking foul as he scored a basket. He missed the free throw, and on the other end, Joliet's Daniel Powell nailed a 3-pointer from the wing to make it 59-53 with 2:04 left.
Powell fouled Sanni at 2:00, but he missed both free throws, and JT's Donnell White rebounded. This time, however, the Steelmen fired up two quick 3-point attempts (the second after an offensive rebound) and missed both. Sanni drove downcourt and hit center Michael Buchanan for a layup that made it 61-53 with 1:34 remaining.
For all practical purposes, that was it for a JT season that finished in a blaze of glory.
"We did shoot too quick there when we had a chance to cut it to three," JT coach Luke Yaklich said. "We got antsy and tried to catch the momentum even more there.
"But our kids have big hearts and they want to take the big shots. The right things just didn't happen for us to win."
In the final analysis, the first half probably did in the Steelmen. They trailed 30-18 at halftime.
"We needed a push in the first half and we couldn't get it," Yaklich said. "I felt over the course of the game, if you had told me the score would be in the 60s, I would have said we would be right there to win it.
"When we cut it to six in the last 2 minutes, that was like a microcosm of the game. We couldn't get a push to get over the top, and H-F did the things they needed to do."
Yaklich said he had no doubt the Steelmen would make a run in the second half, but the oomph they needed in the first half never came.
JT outrebounded H-F 18-6 in the fourth quarter and 35-24 in all. The Steelmen made 17-of-21 free throws. They committed 1 turnover in the second half, 9 in the game.
Seven of their players scored at least 6 points -- White 11, Thompson and Kenneth Moore 8 and Sturdivant, Powell, Polley and Anthony Shoemaker 6. White, nicknamed "Diesel", also had 9 rebounds, proving at times to be too much for H-F to handle inside.
But on the flip side, JT made 6-of-19 shot in the first half and 18-of-53 for the game, 34 percent. Against No. 1, that didn't quite get it done.
"We handled the ball well, we rebounded well, we just didn't shoot a high enough percentage," Yaklich said. "We had to make more of our shots."
"We came out a little nervous and flat-footed," Sturdivant said. "We couldn't get the ball in the hole in the first half."
Dillard led H-F with 22 points and Sanni added 18. So how good is H-F?
"Certainly their point guard play with Dillard makes them a threat to win it all," Yaklich said. "He makes everyone on their team better, and anytime you have that, you have a shot."
"They are good," Sturdivant acknowledged.
But so are the Steelmen. Despite the loss, JT won eight of its last 11 after sitting at 8-9 following the first H-F game.
"We accomplished a lot, and I'm proud of every last one of these guys," Sturdivant said. "Our new coach (Yaklich), he did everything he could for us."
"I'm proud of our kids," Yaklich said. "They bought into our program and represented our high school with a tremendous amount of character."
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