Hinsdale Central falls in OT to Guilford in Hoops for Healing championship

OSWEGO – The big-time plays being made during Friday’s Hoops for Healing championship game provided big entertainment.

That included an OT-forcing 3-pointer from Hinsdale Central’s Vincas Buzelis.

But in the end, it was defense and turnovers that caught up with the Red Devils in a 79-76 overtime loss to Rockford Guilford at Oswego High School.

“It was a high level game,” Red Devils coach Nick LaTorre said. “I thought they shot the ball exceptionally well, and they’re a good, experienced ball club. This time of year to have a game like that is just going to help us. It’s going to be a growing opportunity for us. Give them a lot of credit, they played really well because we played well today.”

Rockford Guilford (3-1) led 39-38 at halftime. Dillon Orozco’s 3-pointer early in the third quarter gave the Red Devils a 41-39 lead.

They’d maintain it until Connor Nachampassack-Doyle knocked down a 3 for the Vikings to tie the game at 54-54 just seconds into the fourth quarter.

A steal and a layup from Branden Chatman followed by a 3-pointer Je’ Sean Frye suddenly had the Red Devils down 63-56 with 2:56 left.

“I feel like when you play a good opponent like that and it’s a high scoring game, it’s the little things that you need to execute, especially on defense,” Orozco said. “We struggled the most on defense. We just got to do the little things at the end of the game to get the win. I felt like we were really close and probably played our best offensive game this season, but it’s just defense for us. Got to be better.”

Hinsdale Central (3-1) rallied behind a 3-pointer from Buzelis (30 points), a charge taken by Michael Howell, a scoop near the hoop from Eric Kozys and then a steal and lay-in from Orozco to tie the game at 63-63 with 1:04 left in the fourth quarter.

“I felt like every time we were just about to pull away we’d have some critical turnovers,” LaTorre said. “But it was a really good game. We need to be better defensively. Every game we played we just needed to be better defensively. We have to have a better mindset defensively. That being said, a lot of really good (things happened in the tournament). We’re excited, but we have a lot of things that we need to improve upon.”

The Vikings snagged the lead back at 66-63 on Jaden Webster’s 3-pointer with 46 seconds left.

The Red Devils proceeded to turn the ball over, but got it back on a steal from Kozys.

They nearly turned it over again but the ball went off a Rockford Guilford player with 3.7 seconds left, which was plenty of time for Buzelis. The senior Division I recruit received the inbounds pass from Dillon Dell and dribbled to create some space before sending in a 3 as the buzzer sounded, forcing OT at 66-66.

“He’s amazing. He’s like that. He’s a superstar,” Orozco said. “He comes to every game and you know he plays really hard. He doesn’t care who scores. He’s selfless. And we play as a team, so I feel like we don’t really care who scores. We just want to win at the end of the day. That was our goal coming here. We knew we had experience from last year so we just wanted to win.”

Rockford Guilford pulled ahead 77-73 after Wonyae Berry-Snead split two free throws with 10.3 seconds left in OT. A turnover turned into two more points at the free throw line from Chatman, which made it 79-73. Time ran out seconds after Orozco’s 3. He had 22 points..

“It feels great making big plays,” Chatman said. “Big plays for the team helped get us this. We couldn’t do this without them.”

All that was really missing from a great week of hoops for the Red Devils was winning it all.

“Our end goal is obviously to go 4-0 (here),” Orozco said. “But I feel like with this loss there’s more to build from. And I feel like we’re going to bounce back even better than just going 4-0 and thinking we can win every game. Sometimes that’s just not the case. Sometimes you’re going to lose games and you got to learn how to bounce back for sure.”

Tyler Thick had 13 points and nine rebounds for the Red Devils.