Fenton revels in progress despite defeat

Fenton didn't get where it wanted to go Monday night, but considering where it's been, the Bison still saw progress.

That means a lot to the Bison.

Fenton lost 57-45 to DeKalb in the Class 4A Rolling Meadows regional opener, but the Bison finished 16-16 overall, more wins than the program had the previous three seasons combined. They placed fourth in the Metro Suburban Conference Red Division.

"Overall I think it was amazing," Fenton senior Julia Kaspari said of the season. "I couldn't be more happy with all of them. We've come a long way."

But it will be DeKalb (12-17) advancing to Tuesday's regional semifinal against host Rolling Meadows, the top seed in the Batavia sectional.

"It's nice to be able to get a regional win, a postseason win, I guess, especially after we had a tough one last year," second-year DeKalb coach Tyler Bantz said. "We have the most wins that DeKalb has had in the last five or six years or so. We keep adding on to that. Obviously, we're going to have our hands full tomorrow."

The Barbs led from start to finish, building a 16-point lead in the second quarter. Fenton started cutting into the lead late in the third quarter, with Kaspari's basket pulling the Bison within single digits, 39-31.

Alyssa Hoffing followed with a 3-pointer to open the fourth quarter.

"All game we kept telling them we need that one big shot to spark us, and I thought we had it here when we hit this corner 3," Fenton coach Dave Mello said.

Alexus Arzola made a 2 and Isa Lozada scored with 5:43 remaining to cut the DeKalb lead to 40-39.

And then the Fenton shots stopped falling.

"I think they just got the best of us at the end. Started to get tired. Shots weren't going in," Kaspari said.

The Bison made just 1 of their next 13 shots. DeKalb went on a 9-1 run to regain control of the game.

"That kind of sealed the deal there once they were able to get it back up to 9," Mello said.

The Bison immediately started thinking about next season, when they will move to the Upstate Eight Conference and drop to Class 3A, Mello said.

"We'll get there," he said. "We've made a ton of progress from the first day we talked back in November of (2017) to now, it's a completely different program."