Back in the early 2000s, three brothers were a part of the Chicago high-school basketball scene as Marc, Jalil and Eddie Harvey were notable players for De La Salle and Leo.
All three have had a big influence on Oak Lawn senior Marc Harvey Jr. — especially his father, Marc Sr.
“I see them a lot,” Marc Jr. said. “Everything you see in my game I learned from them. Breaking my plays down, playing the lanes, getting steals — all of that is something they taught me.”
They taught him well.
Harvey is the leading scorer for the Spartans, who split a pair of games last week and saw their 13-game winning steak snapped.
On Feb. 11, the Spartans beat Hancock 88-34, but they fell on Feb. 14 to Thornwood 61-53 in a pair of home nonconference games. The team enters this week with a 23-7 mark.
Harvey had 20 points, six rebounds and five steals against Hancock (13-14) and Jack Dempey added 15 points. Jayden Harris had 12 points for Hancock.
Against Thornwood (21-9), Harvey had 18 points and Omar Saleh added 16.
In the Hancock game, Harvey set the tone with amazing bursts of scoring and rebounding, and caused turnovers with steals.
“Man, I like all of them,” he said. “Just being able to get to my points and get to my buckets, getting around to getting rebounds and steals — they are all good to me.”
Spartans coach Jason Rhodes’s favorite part of Harvey’s game doesn’t always show up on the traditional stat sheet.
“He’s very long and he uses that to his advantage,” Rhodes said of Harvey. “What he does for us is get a ton of deflections. Those don’t always turn into steals but what they do is disrupt the rhythm of the other team’s offense.
“I’m always trying to encourage him to get deflections and not necessarily steals.”
Oak Lawn was scheduled to close out the regular-season portion of its season on Feb. 17 against South Suburban Red rival Eisenhower. The Spartans already wrapped up their fifth straight conference title with an 10-2 mark.
Meanwhile, the postseason is right around the corner and the Spartans drew the eighth seed in the Class 4A Mount Carmel Sectional. They open the playoffs at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25 in the Jones Regional facing ninth-seeded Lyons in Chicago.
The winner could tackle No. 1 Curie on Feb. 27.
“We’re looking good in practice and we’re working our hardest to try to get a regional championship and get out of the regionals for the first time since 1988,” Harvey said.
Rhodes knows that will be a tough task, but his team winning possibly 14 of its final 15 should give the Spartans confidence.
“We’re playing our best basketball,” he said. “A couple of our losses — honestly we should have won those games. We might even be better than our record.
“Obviously we’re in the best sectional in the state, so it doesn’t matter where you are seeded. In my opinion, you are going to face a great opponent in the regional semi and the regional finals. We just have to do the best we can every day to get better.”