Bartlett surprises York, takes regional crown

Bartlett girls basketball coach Denise Sarna told her team that its Class 4A regional final win was, "a beautiful thing."

The Hawks beat York 50-40 at Wheaton North on Thursday with something that has been its identity the whole season - defense.

"I thought our team did a good job defensively," Sarna said. "We came out with a good defensive mindset. We knew that they had really great shooters and great ability to drive so we really tried to focus on keeping them out of the lane and still sticking to their shooters and that's not an easy thing to do because they're a really nice team."

Bartlett (20-9), which won its first regional title since 2012 and the seventh in program history, will take on Geneva Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Geneva sectional semifinals.

Coming out of the gate, the sixth-seeded Hawks seemed to take advantage of opportunities more than No. 3 York (19-10).

The Dukes had the lead early but midway through the quarter Bartlett retook the lead by spreading out the scoring with good ball movement, going into the second quarter up 14-7.

Continuing from the first quarter, Bartlett hit 6 quick points but struggled at the end of the quarter to get the ball because of York's work down low on the boards.

York ended up outscoring Bartlett 7-6 in the second quarter but with just under a minute left starting senior guard and top defender Jamie Kovatchis went down with a bad knee injury and didn't return for the game.

"Obviously we're disappointed in the end result, but I'm not disappointed in our effort," said York coach John Constable. "It takes a lot out of you when you lose a player like Jaime Kovatchis early in the game like that. You prepare for a lot of things, you don't prepare for things like that."

Coming out of halftime Bartlett didn't lean on its lead, it increased it thanks to guards Lauren Janczak and Kaitlin Brohan. The duo combined for 13 of the Hawks' 15 third-quarter points, and more importantly Bartlett held York to just 6 points in the quarter. Janczak finished with 17 points and Brohan had 15. Nicole Gerdevich added 8 points to the win.

"We knew that they were 3-point shooters so we knew to keep them out of the 3-point area and we knew who their shooters were and their drivers," Janczak said. "We just knew who to keep out of the lane and who to not let shoot the 3-pointers."

With a double-digit lead and heading into the fourth up 35-20, the Hawks had to deal with high pressure from York to get out of the game.

The Dukes pressured high looking for the trap and forced a couple of easy layups for Jessica Bianchi, who had a team high 16 points, and even cut the lead to single digits, but there wasn't enough time for a full-on comeback.