Boys Basketball: Mekhi Lowery, Oswego East throw mighty scare into Moline

NORMAL – Mekhi Lowery was looking up all night at Owen Freeman, giving away three inches while guarding Moline’s mighty 6-foot-9 Iowa recruit.

Going down easy? Fat chance.

On the heels of winning the school’s first sectional title, Lowery and the Wolves were in no mood to see the program’s best season go away. Not even against an opponent with two kids going to Iowa.

“I love my guys, that’s a great team, a couple Big Ten recruits, but we’re always up for the challenge,” Lowery said. “We love being the underdog.”

The Wolves indeed showed plenty of bite.

Oswego East led the No. 2-ranked team in the state by nine points at one point in a furiously-paced first half, and then again by four points early in the fourth quarter.

Moline, though, came back behind Freeman’s 22 points – and nine dunks. Oswego East had four consecutive empty possessions in a pivotal stretch midway through the fourth quarter, and Moline went on to a 59-55 win in the Class 4A Normal Supersectional at CEFCU Arena.

“They’re a great team. We knew it was going to be a dogfight,” said Freeman, who said his nine dunks may have tied a personal record. “We just had to follow the game plan, it got us the win.”

It gets Moline (33-3), challenged for the first time this postseason, to state for the first time since 2004, with the Maroons advancing to face Downers Grove North – which upset fourth-ranked Kenwood – in a Friday semifinal in Champaign.

Much respect on the way, though, to Lowery and the Wolves. As Freeman passed by Lowery in the hallway, the two stars with a history shared an embrace.

Lowery, a Towson commit, had 20 points, nine rebounds, five assists and three steals in his final game. His layup off a feed from Ryan Johnson, who scored 13, had Oswego East (30-6) ahead 51-47 with 6:37 left.

“Me and Owen, we played together during COVID, a league down in Indiana, we played for the same team,” Lowery said. “It was more like a rec league, didn’t get to feel how he played. It definitely helped me learn his game a little bit though.”

Lowery even got a hand on blocking one of Freeman’s shots, easier said than done.

“It definitely is tough trying to front him. His arms are so big and he’s so long,” Lowery said. “They’d just throw it over the top and he’d have a wide-open dunk. Tough matchup.”

Freeman’s game was indeed played above the rim all night Monday, unstoppable with three dunks in the game’s first two minutes alone. Most of the action came on assists from fellow Iowa recruit Brock Harding, who had 12 points and five assists. If it wasn’t Freeman, it was 6-foot-5 Treyvon Taylor, who scored 18 himself with the go-ahead basket with 5:03 left.

“They’re really good players, D1 players for a reason, Freeman is a handful,” Oswego East coach Ryan Velasquez said. “We wanted to front him and limit his touches. He’s so big and on the spin move when he does catch the ball he had good vision to find [Taylor]. We needed to do a better job loading up on the help. The second and third and fourth rotation, we just didn’t have.”

The Wolves did have plenty of heat at the other end.

Lowery and Johnson each scored six points in the first quarter, leaving Oswego East leading 20-15 after a furious first eight minutes. Lowery went down hard on his hip late in the first quarter, but returned to hit a 3-pointer to give Oswego East its biggest lead, 26-17, 5:46 before halftime. The Wolves led much of the first half before Moline took a 32-31 halftime lead.

“We knew we had to come into this game and make every possession matter. Every possession matters with that team,” Johnson said. “Honestly we ran more sets than I ever could imagine. We usually run five out sometimes but we ran so many sets because we knew they’d go out and score. Owen, he’s a dog, man.”

So is Lowery, who adjusted his shots near the rim at times to get around the 6-9 Freeman. His basket over Freeman tied it, and Lowery turned a steal into a monster dunk in transition the other way for a 45-43 lead with three minutes left in the third.

“Had to time my shots differently, be acrobatic, go around him,” Lowery said.

Johnson took his turn working around Freeman on the final possession of the third quarter. The 6-foot-7 Oswego East senior’s drive and spectacular reverse layup around Freeman sent Oswego East into the fourth quarter ahead 49-47.

“That reverse layup felt good,” Johnson said, “but we had to keep playing.”

Indeed, Oswego East’s offense went south in scoring just six points over the final eight minutes.

The Wolves had four empty possessions – three missed 3s and an offensive foul off the ball – during a 7-0 Moline run that put Oswego East behind 54-51. In the final minute after Harding made two free throws with 34.7 seconds left, Johnson missed a contested corner 3 for the tie and Lowery had a shot blocked by Freeman.

“Games like this comes down to possessions,” Velasquez said. “When it really mattered in the fourth quarter it was really hard for us to score.”

What mattered most, though, were the memories the Wolves made.

They won the second-most games in program history, avenged a sectional loss from a year ago to Bolingbrook, then knocked off Joliet West for the school’s first sectional title.

“Super proud of them – they made a lot of memories for the school and the community,” Velasquez said. “They made somebody’s night. There’s a 10-year-old coming to these games that will remember them forever. We have a lot of sad seniors and juniors but this moment doesn’t define who they are.”