Boys Basketball: Nathan Valentine does it again with late shooting heroics, rallies Geneva past Lake Park in OT

ROSELLE – Lake Park wasn’t going to let Geneva’s Nathan Valentine beat them Saturday.

He had other ideas.

Valentine buried three three-pointers in a 30-second span in the final minute of Saturday’s DuKane Conference game to force overtime, and the Vikings rallied to deny the upset-minded Lancers 52-50.

“I honestly felt I should’ve been doing that all four quarters,” Valentine said. “I looked at the scoreboard and knew I had to turn it up a notch. (Dylan Fuzak) is killing kids on screens giving me that little more opening and hitting the shots when they count.”

Lake Park (3-6, 2-5) led 44-38 with less than a minute remaining before Valentine’s latest heroics erased the deficit. Valentine this season already has game-winning shots in the last seconds to beat Bartlett and St. Charles North.

The Illinois Wesleyan commit pulled the Vikings to within 44-41 with 43 seconds left and to 46-44 with 28 seconds remaining on back-to-back threes.

“I think we did a good job of sticking to the game plan and at the end getting open shots and setting screens to get Nathan open,” Fuzak said. “It’s something we’ve been working on doing all season, trying to get inside early to open shots for the perimeter at the end of the game when we need it.”

Lake Park’s Cam Ransom, who scored 14 points, made the first of two free throws with 24.5 seconds left to play, but missed the second, which provided the Vikings with an opportunity to draw up a final play.

To no surprise, it ended up in the hands of Valentine.

“We were in a huddle and I said, ‘Who is the guy we have to stop?’ and they all told me (Valentine),” Lancers coach Billy Pitcher said. “We put two guys on him on the last play and we let him free. We played a great game the majority of the game but I was disappointed with our mental breakdown down the stretch.”

Valentine, who scored 21 points, Fuzak, who had 11, and the Vikings seized their opportunities and persevered to battle back and force the game into overtime.

“I thought Brian (Wrenn) ran through a great pass and Dylan (Fuzak) gave a great handoff,” Vikings coach Scott Hennig said.  “Nate came down either the first or second time and rejected a ball screen and made a deep three and he’s a really good shooter. Sometimes our best offense is just him creating of ball screens so we’ll take it.”

The kid somehow makes it look easy. It’s not.

“Part of it is experience,” Valentine said. “It’s justworking muscle memory. It may look difficult, but that’s a shot I work on. Thefootwork is nothing that I’m not uncomfortable with. If I was uncomfortablewith it that’s when mistakes come. All this comes from the work you put in thegym.”

Geneva (6-3, 4-3) took the lead for good at 49-47 on Ryan Huskey’s lay-in with 2:36 remaining in the extra period. It was the Vikings’ first lead since Chris Sugar’s putback right before halftime gave Geneva a 22-21 lead. 

Valentine then shook things up, driving to the hoop for a layup to extend Geneva’s lead to 51-48 with 1:34 left.

The Lancers had an opportunity to win in regulation, but Tony Czaja’s three was off the mark. They also had a final shot at forcing a second overtime or winning it outright, but Sebastian Blachut’s long,off-balance two-point attempt drew iron.

“We had a play at the end, but the guys didn’t run it,” Pitcher said. “We had (Vito) LaGioia wide open, but we didn’t get the ball to him at the start of the play and we were scrambling without any timeouts to use.”

LiGioia led the Lancers with 18 points while Blachut added 12 points, including a highlight-worthy alley oop dunk midway through the second quarter. Blachut and Matt Zakic had five rebounds apiece.

Huskey added eight points and Wrenn collected five rebounds for the Vikings.