Third Time Is Not The Charm For Huskies

After twice , the Oak Park-River Forest boys basketball team hoped to reverse the outcome in the third meeting.

That was an emerging possibility when the Huskies pulled ahead of York early in the second half of Tuesday’s Class 4A Oak Park regional semifinal game.

But then the Huskies had trouble putting the ball in the basket.

The result was not pretty, with York pulling away and beating them again, 67-52.

The stat sheet told the story.

After shooting 58 percent from the field in the first half, OPRF (10-13) shot just 15 percent (4 for 27) in the second half.

“That’s not going to get it done,” Huskies coach Matt Maloney.

Jakari Cammon’s pair of free throws gave OPRF its first and only lead of the game at 37-35 with 6:10 remaining in the third quarter. The home team did not make a field goal during the rest of the period, which ended with York (20-8) holding a 48-41 advantage.

The closest the Huskies came in the fourth quarter was within five on two occasions as their offense continued to struggle.

“That’s what it really came down to,” Maloney said. “We did a tremendous job holding Will Sullivan to 12 points. We were real happy with our effort there. It just seemed like we couldn’t quite counter some of the punches that they had.”

York’s biggest blow came from David Cohn. The sophomore guard dropped in a game-high 24 points.

“Obviously Will’s the best player in the gym and when they overplay him somebody has to make plays,” Cohn said. “I just stepped up when the team needed me to. It’s all about how I can help out the team.”

Senior guard Cody Kliethermes also helped the Dukes by drilling four three-pointers en route to 13 points. He converted a four-point play to extend his team's lead to 56-45 midway through the fourth quarter.

“That really got things flowing our way,” York coach Dominic Cannon said. “That was kind of a back-breaker there,” Maloney said.

Junior forward Gabe Levin scored the Huskies’ first 10 points and wound up with a team-high 14. Junior guard Ka’Darryl Bell was held to 12 in the face of changing defenses that focused on stopping his drives to the basket, while Cammon chipped in 10 off the bench.

“I thought Ka’Darryl did a commendable job for what they were throwing at him,” Maloney said. “We shut down their big gun, Sullivan, and David Cohn steps up and hits (24). They tried to take Ka’Darryl out of the game and we needed some guys to step up the way Cohn did to kind of pick up that scoring punch for us.”

The Huskies lost their final six games.

“We struggled at times offensively to make shots,” Maloney said. “There were many games where we weren’t able to put together four quarters. The beginning of the year we were scoring at a high rate. Teams obviously scouted us and knew we could get up and down. They stopped our transition game and our dribble penetration and kind of forced us to play on the perimeter. We just never seemed to shoot the ball all that well.”