Kits Settle For 2nd After Last-Second Layup

CENTRALIA --- Evanston’s basketball team was poised to win its second holiday tournament championship in five years here Saturday night.

Then Centralia’s Archie Goewey dropped a load of coal into Evanston’s Christmas stocking.

The Centralia freshman’s lay-up with one second remaining off an inbound pass lifted the host team to a stunning 54-53 victory in the championship game of the 81st annual Centralia Holiday Tournament.

Goewey’s game-winning bucket snatched the title from the Wildkits and also enabled him to take Most Valuable Player honors away from the clear favorite, Evanston’s Theo Rocca, as the Wildkits settled for their third runner-up finish at the tournament since 2021. Goewey finished with a game-high 25 points as the hosts repeated as tourney champs.

He’s the first freshman to earn MVP honors since the award was created in 1967 and his heroics sent a near capacity crowd home happy.

The Wildkits? They likely spent the 300-mile trip back to ETHS thinking about what could have been.

And it was only fitting that the game-winning shot came on a layup, because the well-coached Orphans executed like a veteran team in the finals even though they only start one senior, and pulled off at least a half dozen “back door” plays for baskets that burned the Kit defense.

ETHS, now 12-2 overall, had battled back from a 47-42 deficit early in the fourth period to take a 53-52 lead on freshman Ben Ojala’s 3-point basket from the left side with 26 seconds left in regulation play.

Ojala had an opportunity to register the first 4-point play of his short varsity career when he was fouled on the play. But his miss at the charity stripe gave the hosts a chance to win it at the other end --- and that’s just what they did.

After giving up a foul with 3 seconds left --- Centralia still wasn’t in the bonus free throw situation yet --- ETHS head coach Mike Ellis called a timeout he later came to regret.

Why? Because that gave Centralia coach Lee Bennett a chance to get back to the drawing board, too.

“He’s really a great coach and I put us in a bad situation there at the end,” Ellis confessed. “I wanted to set up our defense. But when Coach Bennett gets a chance to draw up a game-winning play, he’ll make the most of it. They did a great job of executing on that last play when he (Goewey) cut hard right to the basket.

“But the game was won or lost on the other plays throughout the game, in the second and third quarter, when we didn’t seize the opportunities we had. We did play with a lot of guts and I’m really, really proud of them for that. We gave up too many of those back-door baskets, though. They’re aggressive and they really cut hard to the basket. That’s a well-coached team.

“To me, finishing second (like in 2021 and 2022) is really a disappointment. We had a lot of advantages tonight. Two minutes into the fourth quarter we were in the bonus, and believe me, that doesn’t happen often for the other team on this court. We needed to take good shots, and finish plays, and we didn’t take advantage of some golden opportunities. We had our best free throw shooter (Ojala) out there on the line and a four-point play would have been big. I had all the confidence in the world he would make it.”

Ellis wasn’t throwing any of his players under the proverbial bus, not after they faced their third one-loss team in a row in an effort to claim the title. Clearly the most dominant player at the 3-day event was Rocca, who finished as the tourney’s second leading scorer with 89 points in four games including a career-high 28 points in Saturday’s 58-48 semifinal triumph over Chicago Dyett.

But senior forward faded in the second half of the title game after he was whacked in the eye while pursuing a rebound in the final seconds of the first half that ended with the Wildkits clinging to a 29-26 lead.

The Evanston senior scored on a drive to the hoop to open the second half, then tossed up four air balls the rest of the way and finished with 18 points. Ojala also netted 12 points for the losers, who connected on 11-of-26 3-point field goal attempts including a couple from the 25-foot range by sharpshooter Rocca.

“I don’t think Theo was affected physically. It was more mental,” Ellis explained. “He tried to put the whole team on his back, and he forced some things. He really didn’t need to do that. Theo had a great, great tournament. He had a really great four-game stretch down here and he’ll learn from that. He probably should have been the MVP, but when a kid (Goewey) scores 25 points in a championship game, that carries a lot of weight.”

Rocca, in fact, outscored Goewey 89-55 but had to settle for the distinction of being the first Evanston player ever to earn back-to-back all-tournament selections here. He also was named first-team all-tourney as a junior while leading the Kits to third place.

With two freshmen and two sophomores in the starting lineup, the Orphans played with poise and only turned the ball over six times against the ETHS defense. They outscored Evanston 19-12 in the third quarter and built the advantage to 47-41 on the first possession of the fourth quarter thanks to a drive and score by Jaxson Handock, only his second field goal of the game.

But the Kits hadn’t come this far seeking a second place trophy. An old-fashioned 3-point play by sophomore Vito Rocca put them back on top 48-47, and after another back-door bucket for Centralia, guard Kaidan Chatham climaxed a long possession with a strong drive for a layup that restored the lead at 50-49.

Centralia came through the back door again before Ojala’s clutch shot gave Evanston its last lead of the night.

“We did have a lot of guys who played well,” Ellis said. “Jayden (Rodriguez) got more minutes tonight. He really helped us on the boards (5 rebounds) and he made a big 3, too. Ian Peters did a great job on defense and as a team we only gave them 4 3-point baskets. But those back door plays were really a problem for us. Now New Trier, and Maine South, and everybody in the CSL (Central Suburban League) will read about this and try to back door us all night when we play them.”

Evanston strung together three solid performances prior to that loss to end 2024, defeating Chicago Bogan (76-41), Alton (61-53) and Dyett (58-48) on their side of the championship bracket.

Rocca’s heroics against Dyett couldn’t prevent ETHS from falling behind 39-34 at the start of the fourth quarter. For the game, he converted 9-of-18 field goal tries --- 6 of 12 from 3-point range --- but the Kits couldn’t locate another hot hand until sophomore guard Dion Lane Jr. stepped up in the clutch.

Lane connected on back-to-back corner 3s as Evanston went on a 15-4 run to pull away in the final quarter. Prior to those two shots, the southpaw shooter had missed all three of his attempts coming off the bench.

Finding a rhythm was part of the trust that’s developed among the current players on a squad with only a few returning veterans and two transfers in Chatham and George Richardson. Richardson, incidentally, came into the tourney as the team’s No. 3 scorer this season but only played a few minutes because of a bout with the flu.

Lane didn’t shy away from the spotlight when he had a chance to shine.

“I was a little nervous but then I found my rhythm,” Lane said. “I think the first time down Ian found me for that corner 3, and the next time down it was Kaidan. They trusted me and that really goes a long way for me. There’s always trust with this team and that’s what makes us a great team. They gave me the opportunity to make some plays, and I just knocked down the shots.

“When Dyett switched to a zone (in the second half, due to foul trouble) that’s when they were in more of a scramble mode and we started to make plays.”

“Our defense was there all night. The key was keeping it close until we could find a guy with the hot hand,” said the ETHS coach. “They found the guy with the hot hand (Lane) because they kept sharing the ball.

“That was Theo’s fifth double double of the season (points and rebounds) and our guys really believe in him.”

In the quarterfinals, the Wildkits knocked out Alton as Rocca delivered 21 points on the offensive end and Chatham limited Redbird star (and all-tourney choice) Semaj Stampley to nine points on 3-of-8 shooting from the field. Stampley, a junior, is being hotly pursued by several Division I college programs.

“Kaidan goes up against a kid like that and holds him to half of his average. That was big for us,” Ellis praised. “That was really a big-time performance. I would hope that Kaidan wants assignments like that all the time. It’s up to him to play and get those results.”

With the outcome still in doubt, Evanston only turned the ball over twice in the fourth quarter and converted 6-of-8 free throw attempts down the stretch. Peters sank four in a row in the last minute of play and Timi Ogunsanya added a pair for the winners.

On Day 1 of the tourney, the Wildkits hit Bogan with a 44-point blitz in the first half and cruised to the first round win behind Theo Rocca’s 22 points and 12 apiece from Ojala and Lane Jr. Evanston shot exactly 50 percent from the field (29-of-58) in the running clock victory.

Evanston’s next game is set for January 7th at Glenbrook South. The Kits will play 7 of their 9 games in January on the road.