Cillick, Lake Park beat Naperville North in final seconds

Lake Park was looking for a player to make a play. Sarah Cillick decided it was her turn.

The 5-foot-10 junior drove the right baseline and scored the game-winning basket with 1.7 seconds to play Friday night, giving the Lancers a 52-51 girls basketball victory against host Naperville North at the Naperville North/Benet Tournament.

"Players make plays is what we live for, so I just had to finish that one for us," said Cillick, who finished the game with 8 points. "I saw an open lane, and (Naperville North senior Kayla) Sharples is a wonderful player, so I just had to step in and I got past her somehow. Jennifer Warfield gave me a nice path. I went in for the layup. It went in. Players make plays."

"That was a win we've been waiting for for a couple of years," Lancers coach Brian Rupp added of his rebuilding program. "We feel like we beat teams we're supposed to beat, and we really haven't gotten a team we have no business beating. That's a really good team. I have a lot of respect for that team. ... This is one our program needs. We've had a long couple of years. This is a good win for us."

Lake Park (4-4) - which lost by 10 to Naperville North last week in DuPage Valley Conference play in Roselle - seemed to have the game under control when Alexis Pall's basket gave the Lancers a 43-33 lead to start the fourth quarter.

"We talked about it at the quarter break to see if we could cut in half by the four-minute mark," Huskies coach Jason Dycus said.

The Huskies (6-3) decided to put a rush on that comeback, scoring the first 11 points of the final period, taking the lead on Katie Cores' lay-in off a Cece Pope assist with 5:18 to play.

"Naperville North is a good team," Cillick said. "Every team goes on streaks. We went on a little streak there, they went on a nice streak."

After a few streaks in the first three quarters, the teams' traded the lead a few times down the stretch, with Sharples putting the Huskies in front by a point with 26 seconds to go when she put back her own miss.

Twenty seconds later, Cillick found herself with the ball in the right corner and a clear path to the basket.

"They probably deserved to win, to be perfectly honest," Dycus said. "I don't think our defense was as good as it needed to be. ... I'm proud of our girls' comeback. I think that's a sign of our program headed in the right direction. It's just we have to play each possession like it's our last, and I don't think we did that tonight."

Emily Duckhorn led the Lancers with 18 points, and Warfield added 17 points and 11 rebounds. Sharples' 17 points led the Huskies, with Laurel Pereira adding 10.

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