ROCHELLE — Johnny Beck wasn’t expecting Rochelle’s final pass of the game to fall into his hands, but the sophomore Hub knew exactly what to do with it.
With 3.4 seconds left in Rochelle’s conference clash with the Morris Redskins Tuesday night, Beck caught an assist in the right corner from senior teammate Kaywan Palmer and canned a 3-point jump shot to propel the Hubs to a 64-63 victory.
“I thought he was going to throw the ball in to Kyle [Seebach] honestly,” Beck said. “I wasn’t ready for a shot but it was a good pass from Kaywan… It was a good win and we can’t afford to lose any more games.”
Rochelle (16-5, 7-3 NIB-12) nearly squandered away the game Tuesday night, as the Redskins (9-13, 1-8 NIB-12) rallied back from being outscored 25-10 in the third quarter to take the lead late in the fourth quarter behind a game-high 28 points from senior guard Matt Shaw. Up by a score of 63-61, Morris forced a pair of Hub timeouts before Rochelle head coach Tim Thompson drew up his team’s last offensive play of the contest.

“It was a somewhat similar play to what we ran against Ottawa,” Thompson said. “We were going to run a player through the baseline and get Kyle isolated on the post because he was much taller than the kid guarding him. They sagged back to Kyle so we couldn’t throw it directly into him, so Landon [Griffith] inbounded the ball to Kaywan and he was going to try and get something easy going to the basket… Johnny came open and once he got the ball he didn’t think twice.”
The Hubs led 28-27 at halftime, but the boys had a tough time containing Shaw. The Morris standout converted on six 3-point shots in the first half for 18 of his points, prompting Thompson to remind his team inside the locker room what its primary defensive objective was.
“We let somebody that we talked about in our game plan get away from us,” he said. “He was getting open looks and we couldn’t allow that to happen… They run really good offense for him and they keep him moving. They’ll run him off double screens and that can suck in a defense.”
Shaw was held to just two points in the third quarter, where Rochelle began to take over control of the game. Senior Caleb Gould swished home three straight 3-pointers for nine of his team-high 18 points in the game, and after scoring on a 2-point shot under the rim, junior Komla Gati stole an inbounds pass and fired an assist to Gould for two more points to force a Morris timeout with the Hubs leading 42-34.
“Caleb had been struggling to shoot the ball over the last few games but his shot was looking gorgeous,” Thompson said. “He rose up with confidence and knocked down shots, and Komla was huge in that run as well. We need to build off of those runs. I think we get excited sometimes and those situations are where we need to definitely be locked in defensively.”

Rochelle finished the third quarter leading 53-37, but the Redskins surged back quietly in the fourth quarter, cutting the Hub lead to six points before a skirmish under the RTHS basket resulted in a technical foul on Gould. With 3:21 left in the game, the Redskins had a 58-56 lead.

“We looked up and the next thing we knew it was a two-point game,” Thompson said. “Morris just made plays. They got the looks they wanted, they finished around the rim and they got a couple of second-chance opportunities. We just can’t have that happen.”
The Redskins wound up outplaying the Hubs by a score of 26-11 in the fourth quarter, but Beck’s 3-point dagger nuffilied almost any chance of a Morris comeback. The Redskins inbounded the ball to roughly the half-court line with just seconds remaining, and a jumper from the left side hit the front of the him.