Geneva throttles St. Charles East
Memo to any Upstate Eight River team who beats Geneva in the regular season - better hope your path doesn't cross with the Vikings come playoff time.
Geneva settled the score with St. Charles East in an emphatic way Thursday night, opening a 19-point halftime lead on its way to a 64-39 victory in front of a nearly full house at the Contest Gym in the Class 4A Geneva sectional championship game.
The Saints (22-8) defeated the Vikings by 12 points last month. A year ago it was Batavia who beat Geneva in the regular season.
When Geneva got its chance in the same sectional championship round last year, the Vikings blew out the Bulldogs 48-24.
Now they've got a 25-point win over the Saints for their second straight sectional crown over one of their local rivals, and their fifth title in the past seven years.
"It's about making adjustments and figuring out what you did wrong and getting better at it and not doing it again," Geneva coach Sarah Meadows said. "(Assistant coach) Lindsey (Huettemann) and I studied some film, and our kids buy in. They trust us. We say this is what we want to do and they do it. That speaks volumes for them."
Geneva (23-6) will play New Trier at 7 p.m. Monday in the Class 4A Conant supersectional. A win would send the Vikings to state for the second straight year.
"Sectional final we wanted to prove we are a team that fights back no matter what," point guard Margaret Whitley said. "I think we all proved that tonight."
Geneva came out fired up in its road blue uniforms and won seemingly every 50-50 ball all night.
Truth be told the Vikings won a few 40-60 and 25-75 balls as well. Anytime there was anything remotely close to a loose ball the Vikings beat the Saints to it.
"We were going after it," Geneva senior Janie McCloughan said. "At practice we've been drilling it we need to get every loose ball, get on the ground. Those all turn into possessions for us. Even if it's a jump ball, the next time you do that it's our ball. Those all turn into points."
The game started innocently enough for the Saints, who saw their 11-game winning streak come to a screeching halt. Katie Claussner drove to open the scoring, then a Sara Rosenfeldt assist to Chloe John gave them a 4-2 lead.
Geneva's freshman guards came to play. Stephanie Hart scored the first four points. When Whitley drained a 3-pointer Geneva led 7-4 - the start of a 17-0 game-deciding run that put the Vikings in control the rest of the way.
Whitley finished with 8 points and 3 steals while Hart had 6 points, 6 rebounds and 5 steals all while guarding the Saints' leading scorer Claussner.
"This time we pushed more on offense, played better on defense," Hart said. "We had a really big drive because this is our home court. We really wanted to beat them this time."
McCloughan, who struggled Tuesday in the semifinals with 6 points, was especially aggressive attacking the basket. She scored Geneva's final 8 points of the first quarter for a 15-6 lead.
"I think Tuesday night was my worst game of basketball since my sophomore year I would say," McCloughan said. "It was really hard that night because I expect so much more of myself. These last couple days I just have really been focusing on the mental part of basketball. And that's really hard because I'm so used to training myself physically that to do that mentally is a challenge. My goal was to rebound mentally."
The Vikings kept rolling in the second quarter. Another Whitley 3-pointer and Abby Novak's putback of her own miss made it 20-6. Courtney Reynolds came off the bench for a pair of 3s. They led 31-12 at halftime after Grace Loberg's basket down low.
The Saints made just 6 of 26 shots in the first half (23 percent). They also didn't score from the free-throw line until Kyra Washington sank one with 5:31 remaining; Geneva finished 14 of 18.
"Our shooting was off," Saints coach Lori Drumtra said. "We started to get tight when things didn't go our way, and Geneva is a good team. They have a lot of weapons. I was taken by surprise because we've had some good practices. They made it difficult for Katie to go down the middle."
St. Charles East scored the first four points of the third quarter to pull within 31-16, but that was as close as there would be to a rally. Geneva answered with the next 7 - Novak finding a cutting McCloughan, Loberg converting a stickback and Novak scoring on a spin move - to lead 37-16. By the end of the third quarter it was 52-28.
Claussner scored 20 and 30 points in the two regular season games with Geneva. This time the Vikings didn't pressure her as far out where she had been beating them off the dribble.
"We knew we needed to be extremely disciplined on defense," Meadows said. "Our No. 1 key was defense. Stephanie Hart, I can't say enough about her. To be a freshman and to be able to guard that good of a kid? I mean Katie Claussner is a fantastic player, great career. Grace protected the rim. It was a team effort for sure."
Claussner scored 10 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Saints with 16 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists. Washington added 14 points and 6 rebounds.
Those two seniors led the Saints to their first 20-win season since 2007 and first regional title since 2009.
"This is the best team I've had," Drumtra said. "We can build on that. Katie and Kyra have been amazing for this program, all the seniors. I'm really going to miss the seniors. Very proud of what they've done. We had a really good run in the postseason. Geneva played a really nice game tonight. You can't struggle like we did."
McCloughan led Geneva with 18 points, 10 rebounds. Loberg added 16 points, 10 rebounds, 3 blocks.
The Vikings outrebounded the Saints 39-25 and will look to do the same Monday against New Trier, who beat Evanston Thursday, 41-39.
"In games like these teams step up in huge ways," McCloughan said. "That's nothing to say about St. Charles East but I think we played really well tonight. We overcame a lot."