Niles North showed a remarkable improvement from the beginning of the season to the end but that didn’t make last week’s 69-61 overtime loss to Prospect in the Glenbrook South Regional semifinals any easier.

The Vikings had victory within its grasp, leading by seven points with less than three minutes to play in the game, but it slipped away as the Knights outscored Niles North 24-9 over the final eight minutes.

“I thought we played very hard and showed the type of team that Niles North is going to be in the future and I’m proud of them,” said first-year Vikings coach Glenn Olson. “This game speaks volumes about how far we’ve come. This (Prospect) team beat us by 26 at Christmas.

“We’ve done nothing but get better and better. I knew we would. We’re young and last year we won three games. This is a process and in year one if you told me we’d be 12-15 and playing Prospect close, a returning sectional finalist with three returning starters, I’d tell you, you were nuts.”

Niles North did more than play them close. The Vikings trailed 14-13 after the first quarter but led 26-25 at halftime.

Olson must have gave a great halftime speech because Niles North came out on fire with an 11-2 run but Prospect responded with eight straight points.

Still, the Vikings held a 44-38 advantage heading into the fourth and after back-to-back buckets from Abdel Nader and Andre Shaw with 4:26 to play, they extended the lead to 52-45.

But it was almost all Prospect after that. The Knights took a 57-54 lead with 1:00 to play but Nader tied the game on a long three-pointer with 38 ticks remaining.

After a Knights basket with 20 seconds left, Nader played hero once again scoring on a put-back layup with five seconds left to tie things up at 59-59 and send the game to overtime.

Prospect dominated in the extra session, outscoring the Vikings 10-2.

“Sometimes you just don’t finish,” Olson said. “I can’t complain about our shots. They were three-foot shots. There was a lot of contact but we still have to finish.”

Nader, a 6-5 junior guard who transferred from Maine East after last season, finished the contest with a game-high 31 points.

“It’s real heart-breaking and I really feel bad for the seniors,” Nader said. “I wanted to win it for them. I didn’t want this to be our last game.”

The recipe for success at Niles North was what they did for the first three and a half quarters.

“We were playing good defense, getting great shots,” Nader. “I can’t wait for next year. We’re going to word hard in the offseason. Hopefully we can have a great record and try and get Downstate.”

Not only was Nader new to the team, he had to suffer through a broken wrist, which forced him to be a spectator for several games.

“It was tough at first because of the broken wrist but I fit in perfectly,” he said. “They’re good teammates and we all worked hard together.”

While Nader wasn’t part of last year’s Niles North team that struggled, Marlon Senior was. Senior, who is a senior, knows exactly where the credit for the turnaround should go.

“Coach is the main reason why we’re so good right now,” Senior said. “He believes in us and really motivated us to work hard.”

“Our team has definitely improved from the beginning of the year. We have a great group of young guys that will do well next year.”