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Montini feeds the post to drop Neuqua Valley

While they say you can't teach height, the bigs for the Montini girls basketball team are proof that you can certainly teach your tall players some skills.

Tall sophomore posts Lindsey Jarosinski and Aaliyah Patty dominated on both ends of the floor Friday night as the Broncos knocked off Neuqua Valley 62-23 to improve to 3-0 in pool play at the Hinsdale South Hornet Tip Off Tournament in Darien.

The 6-foot-5 Jarosinski had 10 of her 12 points as Montini jumped ahead 32-15 at the half. She finished the game with 12 points, 6 rebounds and 3 blocked shots as the Wildcats (1-1) did their best to contain the Broncos' many outside threats but couldn't handle the victors down low.

"We just take whatever the defense gives us and they were giving us the post tonight so that's what we got," the Broncos center said. "It's a team effort. If the guards aren't getting what they want, then we'll step up and do what we've got to do."

In the team's first two wins this season the Broncos bombed away from the outside, but on Friday they made just one 3-pointer in the first half, a shot by Emily Cochrane that gave her team a 29-10 lead in the second quarter. But the 3s were not needed as Montini consistently fed the ball inside and Jarosinski and Patty made it look easy.

"The first couple games people were taking away our bigs and our guards went off," Montini coach Jason Nichols said. "Today they gave us that a little bit (inside) and I thought they did a great job. We talked about getting low-post position and all you've got to do is turn and score instead of trying to make these finesse moves. I thought Lindsay and Aaliyah did a great job with that."

Patty tallied 8 of her 10 points in the first half and also had 5 boards and a pair of blocked shots. "We got it inside and we kind of made our moves in there," the 6-3 center said. "They closed on the shooters hard so we got it inside. It was really fun."

It wasn't so much fun for the Wildcats, who return to the tourney action with a noon game Saturday against Sandburg. But coach Mike Williams, whose teams make a habit of saving their best basketball for late-season runs, was not too concerned with the one-sided setback.

"We're going to be just fine once we get some things ironed out," Williams said. "We've got some young kids and we've got some new kids … it's going to be fine. That part I'm not worried about. We knew we couldn't take everything away from them. We took away the 3 and forced them to put it inside, but if you help, they'll kick it out. The two big kids were good."

Neuqua, which struggled with its shooting against the tough Broncos defense, was led by guards Kai Moon with 7 points and Myia Starks with 6.

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