Hinsdale South holds off Glenbard West
Glenbard West played well the first and fourth quarters of Friday's Riverside-Brookfield Holiday Classic girls basketball game. Hinsdale South was even better the middle two quarters.
The Hornets withstood a late Hilltoppers charge to escape with a 50-40 victory on the final day of round-robin play.
"We dug ourselves a pretty good hole to come out of," Hilltoppers coach Karen Persinger said. "We just came out flat the third quarter. I told the girls at halftime, one of the things I was most pleased with was how we played on defense, and then we sort of stopped that great defense that had gotten us to that point. Then we bounced back the fourth quarter and played hard."
The Hilltoppers (1-12) led 9-2 early, but the Hornets cut the lead to 9-7 by the end of the first quarter. By halftime Hinsdale South (7-8) led 23-16, with Gennifer Simpson scored 12 of her game-high 14 points to fill the void when the Hornets' Sydney Kopp went to the bench with foul trouble.
"We were lacking in our energy, and our 2-3 trap defense really gets us going as well as getting the other teams rushing and making bad decisions," Hornets coach Brett Love said. "Not only did it help us get turnovers, it helped us bring up our energy and play a little harder."
With the Hilltoppers piling up turnovers, the Hinsdale South lead reached double digits early in the third quarter when Kopp made the score 26-16 with a pair of free throws. Kyla Hunter bumped the margin to 44-24 by the end of the period with a jumper.
Glenbard West came charging back in the final eight minutes, cutting the margin to single digits when sophomore guard Zoe O'Day hit her second 3-pointer of the period from the corner off a Marisa Vivoda assist with 29 seconds to play.
"How we played in the fourth quarter is what we're capable of," Persinger said. "It's getting them to believe that that's what they can do all the time and that's the way that we can play all the time and building that confidence."
Cheyanne Stage, who scored all 6 of the Hornets' fourth-quarter points, put the game away with one last basket off a Kopp assist in the final seconds.
"It's trying to get us to put quarters together," Persinger said. "We've done a great job all year of fighting back and staying in games, but it's finding that consistency, and we didn't have that tonight from quarter to quarter."
Stage finished with 12 points, and Kopp and Hunter each added 8.
Junior guard Grey Hayes led the Hilltoppers with 9 points, and Kassie Buchholz and Lauren Daggett scored 8 each.
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