Santos, Geneva pass up Downers North
Given a choice between knocking down a jumper or passing to a teammate and watching her do the same, Geneva junior Sidney Santos said she’ll choose the assist every time.
The Vikings’ starting center sparked her team Tuesday at Glenbard East’s Rachel Bach Tournament not by dominating down low but by finding open teammates for easy scores in a 60-29 victory over Downers Grove North.
Santos finished with 5 assists to go with 9 points, 7 rebounds and 2 steals while like the rest of the Geneva starters sitting out much of the second half.
“She’s an all-around good player,” Geneva coach Sarah Meadows said. “She can shoot the ball, she can pass, tonight she got us going. She started passing the ball and we got some easy layups and gave a little spark to us and we went off that. She had a great game.”
Downers Grove North (2-2) led briefly in the opening quarter. The Vikings went ahead for good 9-7 on a pair of Morgan Seberger free throws — Geneva sank 18 of 26 from the line in the game.
Up 17-9 after one quarter, Geneva went on an 11-0 run during a 21-point second quarter.
The first basket came on a Santos assist to Kelly Gordon. After Santos stepped back and hit a 3, she passed to Seberger for a 3, then found Madeline Dunn with position inside for a bucket and Seberger who scored on a drive while being fouled.
“For me when I was younger I remember sitting there and parents saying nice pass instead of nice shot,” Santos said. “I love giving a great pass. It just makes me feel like I’m including everyone on the team. I just love passing. Sometimes I pass too much, sometimes not enough.”
Now with three games after missing the last two years with ACL injuries, Santos deemed herself “83ish percent” on the scale of being back to 100 percent healthy.
“I’d say I’m still working my way back,” Santos said. “There’ still some things I need to work on. But I feel so much better than what I did in the summer. It’s definitely progressing.”
Up 38-17 at halftime and 51-22 after three quarters, Meadows got her reserves plenty of action. The Vikings already were playing short-handed without senior Sami Pawlak who broke the middle finger on her shooting hand in the season-opener Saturday and will be out at least one more week.
Seberger led Geneva with 11 points, Michaela Loebel had 10 points, 5 rebounds and 6 steals, Kelly Gordon 9 points and Abby Novak all 8 of her points in the fourth quarter in what Meadows called their best game this year.
“We looked much better,” Meadows said. “We played well together, we passed, we saw the court, we pushed the ball. I just thought we played all-around better tonight.”
Meadows also liked how junior Madeline Dunn (5 points) and Anna Finch (4 points) responded to extra minutes.
“We’ve been happy with those young kids. Anna Finch and Madeline Dunn, they are playing some really good minutes. Our young kids are stepping up.”
Brittany Nagy led the Trojans with 6 points. Downers Grove North will play Glenbard South at 6 p.m. Wednesday for third place.
Geneva (3-0) faces Crete-Monee at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday for the tournament championship.
“That will probably be our toughest game in the tournament,” Meadows said. “They are athletic. They run, we’ll run, it will be an up-tempo, fast game. It will be fun.”