When the Lake Catholic Cougars and Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin Lions play a contest, you will always see a major league battle.
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When the Lake Catholic Cougars and Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin Lions play a contest, you will always see a major league battle.
The intensity will be super high, same as the effort, and at times, you won’t see the greatest skill sets.
With both teams under the break-even mark this season, and young personnel-wise, that’s how things played out on Friday the 13th in McGarry Gym. The Lions fell behind early, slowly clawed their way back, then used a photo finish in regulation to set the table in overtime for a thrilling 63-53 victory over the Cougars.
Fans of the Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom animal shows of the 1950s and 60s could tell you, lions are slightly larger than cougars, and thus was the case in this game; forwards Wesley Jacobsen and Brendan Hernan controlled the backboards much of the game while teammates further down the growth chart also contributing to erasing an early 7-0 Cougar lead.
Liam Coyne of Lake finally put in his own miss at the first period buzzer for a 15-12 lead, and the Cougars (5-15) held that lead into the halftime break at 27-24.
Playing their second straight game without top scorer Luke Keep, a senior who was out sick, others needed to step up for the Lions (9-10) — and did they ever.
Hernan and Jacobsen each had nine rebounds in the first half as they controlled the boards and loose balls alike. Hernan powered his way to 10 first-half points as well, but the Cougars made some adjustments to stop that effort in the second half.
Jacobsen picked up the slack in his attack as others also made big plays. Lake maintained a slim lead until the fourth period.
An 8-2 run for NDCL, sparked by six points from Jacobsen — the final two on a perfect inbounds pass from Robby Lipowski with 2:28 to play — cut the lead to 46-45.
Colin Kleppel made it 47-45, and the teams played catch-the-greased-piggy until, with less than two ticks left in the game in regulation, Lipowski drove to the hoop and saw his shot roll off, but then right into his own hands, and he dropped it in to force overtime.
“I was just trying to stick to shots I can hit,” Lipowski said. “I wanted to handle the ball more tonight without Luke (Keep) and make sure the guys get to the hoop, We know we can get things rolling if we just stick to what we know we can do.”
“We found out in our last game at Holy Name about how not having Luke Keep forces us to make adjustments,” Head Coach Steve Steinmetz said. “We miss him, but it also pushes us deeper into that next-man-up mentality, and these kids never really get out of a groove and never quit or give up at any time in any game.”
Jacobsen had a monster game, collecting 22 points and 17 rebounds on the night.
“We know that when Brendan gets it going early, we have a good chance,” Coach Steinmetz said. “Once we got into overtime tonight, we just opened things up and went at it harder.”
Hernan, with 15 points and 16 rebounds, knew what had taken place.
“It all came down to us making adjustments getting ready for this game, without Luke, and then doing it again during the game as we went along,” he said as his teammates celebrated after the big win. “I try to play with the same mentality all the time, to play for my teammates, and tonight, in a huge game, it paid off for us all.”
Junior Jason Rook’s 11 points helped Hernan and Jacobsen out big-time.
Stanton Powaski paced Lake with 19 points and five rebounds. Brody Bohr added 14 points in a high-powered effort in the game, including a couple cut lips that needed attention, and Colin Kleppel added 11.
Having a 49-27 edge on the boards also paid huge dividends, leading to more shots, and some really big ones dropped late in the game for the Lions.
