Carmel storms past Mundelein

That was a statement by Carmel Catholic’s girls basketball team.

An extremely loud, cover-your-ears one.

After a convincing, 70-47 win over the host team in what amounted to the championship game of Mundelein’s Lady Mustangs Turkey Shootout on Saturday night, Carmel headed into the locker room and celebrated by banging away at the lockers.

Assistant coach Roger Lass had to tell the girls to quiet it down a notch.

“We were pretty loud,” Corsairs senior point guard Nicole Bitter said with a sheepish laugh. “Coach was like, ‘Settle down. You can be that loud if we make it downstate to Bloomington.’ ”

Carmel appears in line for a big season if it can build off its performance at Mundelein. The Corsairs went 5-0, placing senior guard Kathleen Felicelli, senior forward Cassidy Kloss and junior center Emma Rappe on the all-tournament team.

“As we progressed through our games, I saw a huge improvement,” Carmel head coach Kelly Perz said. “From Game 1 to now, I feel like we’re almost a different team. That’s really encouraging.”

Mundelein (3-2) led 15-14 after one quarter, as Maggie Mahar (10 points) hit one of her two 3-pointers and Jamie Hemmer scored 4 of her team-high 12 points. But Felicelli’s 7-of-8 foul shooting and two baskets helped Carmel take a 32-24 lead into halftime.

“We have this theme going the last couple of games,” Perz said. “It’s one possession at a time, get a stop on defense, score on offense and just repeat it. That’s how we’ve been successful the last couple of games.”

Felicelli’s 21 points led all scorers. Healthy, after playing most of last season with a stress fracture that wasn’t diagnosed until the end of the season, she averaged 18.8 points in Carmel’s five games.

“She’s just playing a lot smarter,” Perz said. “She’s not forcing it. She’s making great moves, and she’s really good at getting herself open away from the ball, which is a hard thing for a lot of high school girls to do. She’s really athletic, she’s super quick, she can handle the ball and she can shoot. She’s hard to guard.”

Leah Lach scored 14 points for the second time in the tournament, while Rappe had 13. Each girl hit a 3-pointer. Sophomore center Emily Casale added 8 points coming off the bench, and Kloss contributed 7.

“We’ve really been playing as a team this year,” said Bitter, who chipped in 4 points. “Everything is coming together. Our offense is great. We have great team chemistry. It’s just awesome.”

Mundelein placed Mahar, Hemmer and Natalie Busscher on the all-tournament team. The Mustangs lost their last two games of the tournament.