Mundelein stays focused, prevails at Carmel
Home-team fans tend to quiet down to a whisper when their own players are shooting free throws.
They think that they're doing the shooter a favor, helping with his or her concentration.
Then, when the road team shoots free throws, the home fans go crazy and make as much noise as possible. They think they're being a distraction.
Well, the Mundelein girls basketball team turned this bit of conventional wisdom on its head on Monday night.
In a raucous environment at Carmel in a Class 4A regional opener, the Mustangs weren't distracted in the least by loud, screaming fans for the home team. It was like they barely noticed the noise as they calmly hit 13 of 16 fourth-quarter free throws to ice a 51-45 victory over Carmel.
Mundelein, which improves to 12-18, will now face Stevenson in the regional semifinals on Wednesday at Carmel.
"When you go into an empty gym and you've got just a few parents there, it's just a whole different ball game than when you've got kids screaming at you. You've really got to focus when then happens," Mundelein coach Brian Evans said. "I think that made a big difference for us here tonight. This is the loudest gym we've played in all season, so we really had to focus ourselves.
"Sometimes at practice, I'll stand under the basket while we shoot free throws and I'll scream and yell and we'll make eight, nine, 10 in a row. Sometimes, I'll be like 'go make eight in a row before you leave,' and it will take 30 minutes. I'm sitting over there practically eating a sandwich or something. It's like, 'Come on!' Then, I'll say, 'Alright, you've got three minutes to make eight in a row otherwise you runs sprints,' and everybody's like, boom, boom, boom. All of a sudden they focus.
"I think the crowd really helped us tonight because of that. We focused."
A good start also helped Mundelein.
The Mustangs were up 13-4 at the end of the first quarter and had a 23-11 lead at halftime. Maggie Mahar had 10 points for Mundelein at halftime.
But Carmel (8-21) didn't roll over.
The Corsairs fought back in the third quarter, outscoring Mundelein 20-7. By the end of the third quarter, Carmel actually took over the lead, 31-30. The Corsairs extended that to 34-30 in the opening moments of the fourth quarter.
"I'm really proud of what my team did. We made the best comeback we could," said Carmel forward Emma Rappe, who scored 7 of her team-high 14 points in the third quarter. "We didn't get ourselves down at halftime when we were down by 12. We just came back and put it all on the floor. We really used our crowd's energy and we just kept getting momentum and that pushed us through. I know I picked up my confidence and I wanted to put it all out there."
The Mustangs got a similar all-out effort in the second half from Mahar, who finished with a game-high 22 points, and teammate Natalie Busscher, who finished with 17.
Mahar scored all four of Mundelein's fourth-quarter field goals and also nailed all four of her free throws to roll up 12 points in the period.
Busscher scored 11 of her points in the second half, including a 6-for-6 run from the free throw line in the fourth quarter.
"We knew we didn't want to lose this game and after falling back a little in that third quarter, we knew what we needed to do to get it back," Mahar said. "We just needed to break Carmel's press, slow down, fill open spots and find shooters and we started doing that. And our free throw shooting was really, really good."
Mundelein broke up a tie game at 38 with about four minutes left with an 8-0 run that included a Mahar basket and six straight free throws, four by Mahar and two by Busscher.
That gave Mundelein a 46-38 with two minutes left.
"That third quarter was by far our best quarter all year," said Carmel coach Kelly Perz, who also got 9 points from Sam Melillo and 8 points from Karoline Yacono. "But I could kind of feel the gas tank getting to empty. I knew we would be tired after that and it was just a matter of what we would have left for the fourth, and it just wasn't enough."