Tigers’ furious comeback falls short to Timothy

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Elmwood Park senior Alex Gomez drives to the net, during a game against Francis Parker. | Michael Jarecki~for Sun-Times Media

Updated: February 20, 2012 8:20AM

A game that shaped up as being for the taking for the Tigers turned on a 16-3 run in the second quarter as Elmwood Park’s boys basketball team couldn’t recover with a furious fourth quarter comeback attempt in their 55-51 Metro Suburban Conference loss at Timothy Christian on Friday night in Elmhurst.

“That cushion made the difference,” said Elmwood Park head coach Mike Wasielewski about the run. “I think we might have been out of gas. We played really hard man-to-man defense, and then they went on that run. We shot really poorly tonight. We can’t win high school basketball games scoring in the 40s. I thought we played great on defense holding them to 55. Our offense really improved this year, but we didn’t show it tonight.”

Senior Julian Molina showed different dimensions of his offensive game as he led all scorers with 26 points. He was good from outside, making three from three-point range and showed he was willing to go to the hoop and was effective in doing so, taking 14 free throws and making 11 of them.

“I’ve always been an aggressive player, and now I’m taking advantage of it more,” Molina said. “It’s not just for me, but driving helps my teammates get open.”

Elmwood Park (8-6, 1-3) held an early lead in a seesaw first quarter, finishing the frame up 11-8 thanks to one of Molina’s threes and a pair of treys from freshman Joe Uvelli. The Tigers opened up a 20-13 lead when senior Dawikd Lipiszko laid in a great feed from Molina with 4:37 left in the quarter. Timothy Christian called timeout and never looked back, going on its big run and scoring the final 11 points of the half.

“We just lost our match-ups and focus on getting to the spot and we weren’t stopping the ball,” Molina said about the defensive issues, during the game-changing run by the Trojans.

Senior Alec Gomez did his part to get the Tigers back into the game, hitting a pair of threes in the third quarter to keep Timothy within sight as they trailed by 12 heading into the final quarter. Molina scored eight points in the fourth quarter to help bring the Tigers back to within five points with 2:08 left in the contest. Gomez hit his third triple of the game with 36.7 seconds remaining to make it a four-point game. The Trojans made 3-of-4 free throws from then on to make the lead insurmountable despite Gomez’s last-second three that put him at 14 points for the night.

“The thing about Julian that was different today was that he was very aggressive going to the basket, and that’s something we’re trying to get the whole team to do,” Wasielewski said. “We’re a good three-point shooting team, but sometimes guys like to settle for that. It’s been a theme of mine to get guys to be aggressive going to the backboard.”

The Tigers host Ridgewood in a “Pack the Place” game between the bitter conference rivals on Friday night. They’ll have some revenge on their minds as the Rebels knocked them out of the state playoffs last year in a hotly contested game.