Hersey turns back Wheeling's spirited charge

Wheeling's girls basketball team came in believing.

And in the fourth quarter, as they chipped away at a 15-point deficit, the No. 6-seeded Wildcats had about everyone else believing.

Third-seeded Hersey saw its lead shrink to 2 points with 26 seconds left when Wheeling's Deanna Kuzmanic completed a 3-point play to make it 54-52.

But as they have nearly all season, the Huskies rose to the occasion on Thursday night.

Sophomore Claire Gritt (team-high 24 points) and junior Maggie Berigan (9 points) each converted a pair of pressure free throws to hold off their Mid-Suburban East rivals 58-52 in the championship game of the Class 4A Grayslake Central regional.

No. 3 seed Hersey (23-6) will face the winner of Thursday's Grayslake North regional championship between No. 2 Prospect (25-2) and No. 7 Rolling Meadows (19-9) in Monday's 7 p.m. semifinal of the Palatine sectional.

In two previous meetings, Hersey pulled away from Wheeling in the second half to win by 16 and 18 points.

This time, thanks largely to Kuzmanic scoring 17 of her game-high 34 points in the final seven minutes, the Wildcats were the ones charging.

"It was the opposite of the last two games," said Hersey coach Mary Fendley, who won her ninth regional crown in 17 seasons. "We had a great third quarter (holding Wheeling to 6 points) but they had an awesome fourth quarter."

Awesome as usual was the Alabama-Birmingham bound Kuzmanic, who finished her outstanding four-year varsity career with more than 1,700 points.

"We didn't change much in that last quarter but they did some nice things to score on us," Fendley said. "Kuzmanic was terrific. Not too many teams have found a way to stop her and we were no exception."

The Huskies used some exceptional patient offense to build their lead through the middle quarters.

Sophomore Gina Miklasz came off the bench and hit a 3-pointer for Hersey's first points of the second quarter.

Moments later, back-to-back 3-pointers by sophomore Kelly Weyhrich gave Hersey a 27-17 lead with 5:33 left in the first half.

The Wildcats got back to within 29-26 when Kuzmanic hit one of her five 3-pointers.

But the 5-foot-2 Weyhrich grabbed a long rebound just before half and made a nice pass forward to senior Juliette Vainisi (7 points, 6 rebounds), whose layup sent Hersey into intermission leading 31-26.

Huskies senior Annie Korff (7 points, team-high 12 rebounds, 2 steals) and Weyhrich (8 points) consistently found teammates for open looks as they finished with 7 and 6 assists, respectively.

Despite having a defender glued to her, Weyhrich got off a terrific pass to Gritt inside for an easy layup that gave Hersey a 51-41 lead with 3:08 left in the game.

But Kuzmanic kept plugging away.

Her 3-pointer made it 51-44. She then made a terrific blocked shot and ended up finishing on the other end with a 3-point play that made it 51-47 with 2:14 remaining.

Gritt, who converted 6-of-6 at the line in the fourth quarter, made 2 free throws to make it 53-47.

Kuzmanic then slid a beautiful pass to her right which Melissa Claver caught and put up for an easy layup, cutting he lead to 53-49 with 44 seconds left.

After a free throw by Korff made it 54-49, Kuzmanic produced another 3-point play to get her team to within 54-52.

"Our girls kept fighting and fighting," said first-year Wheeling coach Matt Weber. "When you don't give up on your teammates, good things will happen. The girls believed. They had a goal in mind that they wanted to win this game, and they were focused to do that all the way. They kept doing the things to put us in a position to win but we just fell a little short.

"Credit Hersey. They pressured us and made some big free throws down the stretch."

Gritt ended up converting 7-of-8 free throws and her 24 points were 3 shy of her career-high of 27, which came against Wheeling the last time the teams played.

Claver had 5 points for Wheeling while Lani Greenberg and Hannah Dobrowski each added 4.

"I'm just very honored to work this season with this group of seniors (Kuzmanic, Hailey Dammeier. Dobrowski, Greenberg, Nicole Zlotnikova, Imani Evans and Domenica Chism-Montesinos)," Weber said. "They mad a lot of people proud to be a part of Wheeling girls basketball.

"I asked the players at the start of the season to put a stamp on this program by showing how hard they wanted to work and they end up 21-8 with a lot of people looking at us differently now because of our seniors."