Glenbard South stymies St. Francis

With No. 14-ranked Glenbard South traveling to Wheaton to take on St. Francis in girls basketball action Saturday, setting the stage for the St. Francis boys' senior outing later that night, everyone's timing seemed off.

A late-afternoon start in the nonconference matchup led to an uncharacteristically sloppy start for a pair of teams comfortably over .500. Both teams played rather carelessly with the basketball to start, but it was Glenbard South that eventually emerged with a 59-51 win.

"Our start was not what we wanted, but once we got through that I thought we played OK," St. Francis coach Mike Phillips said. "They have a really good team and that's a program we're looking at saying we want to get there."

The Spartans (12-8) turned the ball over eight times in the first period while the Raiders turned over seven times themselves. However, the frenetic pace seemed to favor Glenbard South in the early going, as it raced out to a 13-0 lead before a Mia Mazza 3-pointer finally ended a seven-minute scoring drought for St. Francis.

In the second quarter the Spartans finally found a bit of a rhythm offensively. They went on their own run, taking their first lead of the game nearly halfway through the period Leah Riccolo steal and a layup that made it 17-16.

Unfortunately for St. Francis, Glenbard South's continued dominance of the boards meant the Raiders took a 31-24 lead to halftime.

"We've been working on that all season. We want to crash the boards offensively and box them out defensively," Glenbard South coach Julie Fonda said. "We obviously outsized them and that helped us, but I'm going to give St. Francis a ton of credit, they forced us to play sloppy."

After the break Glenbard South made a point of attacking the rim with that superior size, and what resulted was frequent trips to the free-throw line where the Raiders did considerable damage.

The team went to the free-throw line 42 times, scoring 24 of their 59 points there. Jenna Brambora and Ivana Markovic had 16 points and 15 points, respectively, while Sydney Bauman was a blocked shot shy of a triple-double.

"She's been a great rim protector for four years, and she's going to be tremendously missed next year," Fonda said after a 13-point, 14-rebound and 9-block performance by the senior center.

Mia Mazza led St. Francis with 12 points. Elinor Cycenas chipped in 10.