St. Charles East hangs on, tops St. Charles North
St. Charles East's girls basketball team found itself in a familiar spot Saturday evening.
After losing third-quarter leads down the stretch in earlier games against Geneva and St. Charles North, the Saints carried a 36-33 advantage into the fourth quarter of their Upstate Eight Conference River Division rematch with the North Stars.
While St. Charles North (12-8, 4-5) was able to tie the game at 40-40 when Morgan Rosencrants split a pair of free throws with 3:09 remaining, this time the Saints (10-14, 6-4) kept their composure and pulled out a hard-fought 46-43 victory on their home court.
Junior guard Sam Munroe (12 points) knocked down 5 free throws in the final 1:06, about a minute after senior Hannah Vitkus snapped the 40-all deadlock on a free throw with 2:11 remaining.
"We've been talking a lot about finishing," said Saints coach Lori Drumtra. "We've done two-minute drills in practice this week. Either we're up by five or we're down by five. You have to think the game and everybody has to be on the same page."
"We've been working on that because every fourth quarter we feel like we just run out of energy," added Vitkus, who had 12 points and 10 rebounds. "We've been working on it against ourselves and against the sophomore team. We thought we could persevere through this one and get the win."
Sophomore forward Sara Rosenfeldt scored a game-high 16 points, pulled down 12 rebounds and blocked 4 shots for the Saints, who enjoyed a 39-28 rebounding edge.
"We got hammered the last time we played them on rebounding," said Drumtra. "We had some nice putbacks in the first half."
Rosenfeldt had a pair of 3-point plays - one on a putback - early in the game and scored 8 first-quarter points as the Saints held a slim 17-16 lead.
"They had seven offensive rebounds in the first quarter," said North Stars coach Sean Masoncup, whose team suffered its fifth loss in six games.
St. Charles East began the second quarter with 8 unanswered points, capping a 12-0 run that extended the margin to 25-16 with 4:57 left until halftime.
However, the North Stars closed to within 30-25 at halftime on the third of four 3-pointers by guard Kyla Helsel (12 points).
Sami Sample netted 9 points and Claire Jakaitis added 7 points and 5 rebounds while missing large chunks of time with foul trouble.
"Claire had to sit on the bench two-thirds of the game with foul problems and we were sitting in a zone," said Masoncup.
While the Saints connected on 12 of 15 of their free-throw attempts, the North Stars misfired on 10 of 19 foul shots (47 percent).
"I think two of them were 1-and-1s so that's like missing 12 free throws," added Masoncup. "You give up seven offensive rebounds, score only 40 points and you miss 11 (10) free throws, it's tough to win a ballgame."