OPRF Boys Basketball's Comeback Falls Short

The Oak Park-River Forest boys basketball team turned the improbable into the possible.

Not only did the host Huskies chop their deficit from 18 to 5 in five minutes in the fourth quarter, but they still had 1:52 left on the clock to erase it entirely.

Proviso West wasn’t buying into the comeback, however.

The Panthers stopped the home team’s momentum by hitting their foul shots and beat the Huskies 77-65 in the West Suburban Conference Silver Division Friday night in Oak Park.

It was tough for the Huskies (10-8, 5-4) to see their comeback attempt fall short.

“I thought we were going to get ’em,” OPRF junior guard Ka’Darryl Bell said.

“It was another valiant comeback, but it was just too little too late,” OPRF coach Matt Maloney said.

Bell fueled OPRF’s comeback by scoring 14 of his game-high 23 points in the final quarter. 

“We play our hearts out, but the execution isn’t always there,” Bell said. “When you play against good teams like that you’ve got to have more. Just effort isn’t going to get it done.”

It was an impressive return for Bell, who missed the Huskies last game due to a tailbone injury suffered Feb. 4 against Hinsdale Central. The junior guard came out of the game in pain when he aggravated the injury late in the third quarter, but he quickly returned to put on a show in the final quarter.

“To have him back was a huge lift for our team,” Maloney said. “And he battled through a lot of pain. He ran right by me (in the third quarter) and said, ‘I’m going back in’ – which I thought was great. It showed his toughness. It showed his will to try to get this team a victory.”  

OPRF jumped ahead 12-4 and held an 18-15 edge after the first quarter behind a hot start by senior guard Josh Lang, who scored eight of his 15 points in the opening period.

But Proviso West’s dominance on the boards began to take a toll. The Panthers (14-7, 7-3) led 33-28 at halftime and stretched their advantage to 51-37 on Tyrone McDonald’s four-point play at the end of the third quarter.

Proviso West received a three-point play from Nicholas Dixon in transition to take its biggest lead at 58-40 with 6:31 remaining.

The visitors finished with a 39-17 rebounding edge powered by 6-foot-4 senior forward Clarence Heath, who grabbed 15 rebounds.

“All year we’ve been outrebounding teams,” Proviso West coach Tommie Miller said.

Miller saw four of his players score in double figures – Dixon (22), McDonald (15), Heath (14) and Nicholas Frazier (13).

The Panthers also beat OPRF at the foul line in frequency and accuracy. They made 33 of 39 free throws (85 percent) while the Huskies sank just 13 of 27 (48 percent).

“We shoot a lot of free throws,” Miller said. “We’ve just been working on ’em, working on ’em, working on ’em. It paid off tonight.”

“One of our offensive goals was to make more free throws than they shot,” Maloney said. “If a team can do that, it almost always wins, and Proviso did that to us.”