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Westmont drops Lisle in semifinals

Lisle coach Dan Murray might have nightmares of Westmont guard Catie Zapinski raining 3-pointers on his team for a while.

Zapinski hit three key 3-pointers in the second half Wednesday night to propel the Sentinels past Lisle 35-27 and into the Lisle Holiday Cage Classic championship game against Antioch at 8 p.m. Thursday.

“Obviously, a game of that type against a team of that caliber, you can’t have the breakdowns throughout the course of the game that we did,” Murray said. “We clearly did not do a good job of matching up in big situations, and I think we let them have four 3-pointers, all out of that situation matching up off of our press into our half-court defense. Give them credit, they knocked it down every time they were wide open. But you just can’t allow that in this type of game.”

Westmont led by 1 point at halftime, but Lisle struggled in the third quarter with 11 of its 20 turnovers, and the Sentinels (15-0) took a 26-17 lead into the fourth quarter.

“We just tried to make them take as much time as they could, and I think we got them out of their patterned offense a lot,” Westmont coach Michael McCord said. “Then I don’t think they were able to recover too much.”

“For whatever reason we still have a long way to go in terms of running our offensive sets, staying patient, looking for good shots,” Murray added. “I think we forced some shots and consequently turned the ball over a couple of times.”

Lisle cut the margin to 5 points in the fourth quarter, but Zapinski was left all alone at the 3-point line with 6:27 to play, and she made the Lions pay. A little more than a minute later she did it again, and suddenly Westmont had a 32-22 lead, and Lisle couldn’t recover.

Zapinski suffered a knee injury late in the game and did not return, finishing with 11 points. Senior Allison Berg led Westmont with 15 points, all coming inside.

“I thought we did a pretty good job on her,” Murray said of Berg. “She’s going to get her points obviously. I was more concerned about those 3s, to be honest with you. She’s going to get hers.”

Sophomore Kelly Urban had 12 points for Lisle, which meets Walther Lutheran at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the third-place game.