Homewood-Flossmoor senior Trelan Morrow hadn’t taken a shot all night Friday when he lined up and launched a 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter.
The ball swished in.
Doubts about shooting? Not Morrow.
“Oh, no,” Morrow said. “I knew that the only way I was going to get my feet was by hitting that one shot.”
From there, Morrow shifted into high gear in helping lead the host Vikings to a 62-52 victory over Bloom.
The 5-foot-7 guard finished with 13 points, shooting 4-for-4 from the floor and 4-for-5 at the line. James Sterling Fields added 15 points for H-F (7-1), while Cortez King-Parks had 10 rebounds and Jeffrey Boyd contributed nine.
Austin Richie led Bloom (5-2) with 15 points.
Morrow’s initial 3-pointer gave the Vikings a 34-33 lead, completing a comeback from as much as a nine-point deficit. He didn’t flinch when receiving the pass from King-Parks, and he didn’t hesitate to shoot.
“I know I can count on my teammates to bring me back in the game,” Morrow said. “I know I can count on them to bring us back in the game. So there was no doubt.”
Fields also went on a fourth-quarter binge for the Vikings. The senior guard followed up the three by Morrow by making a steal and racing in for a layup. On H-F’s next two possessions, he hit for back-to-back 3-pointers.
“We just trusted in our defense,” Fields said of his steal and layup. “I forced (the ballhandler) to my side. He didn’t see me coming, so I just stole the ball and went to the basket to finish.”
Then the threes starting falling.
Fields scored 11 of his 15 points in the fourth quarter. As a team, H-F was virtually unstoppable in the fourth, shooting 7-for-7 and making 14 of 19 free throws.
It was an amazing encore to a third quarter in which the Vikings did not score on two consecutive possessions.
“We kept our confidence,” Fields said. “We’ve done it before, where we’ve been losing and came back to win games. We have confidence in each other.”
H-F’s stunning turnaround stopped what appeared to be a Bloom pullaway.
The Blazing Trojans didn’t score during the first five minutes of the game, but then went on a 13-0 run to charge in front. They stayed there through three quarters behind muscle underneath shown by the 6-5 Richie.
The points blitz by H-F in the fourth quarter left Blazing Trojans coach Dante Maddox Sr. shaking his head.
“We pride ourselves on defense, and in the (fourth quarter) we didn’t play our defense,” Maddox said. “We let their guards go off and get hot, and we never recovered.”
Twitter @tbaranek
