Sectional loss leaves South Elgin in foul mood
BELVIDERE - Peyton Kennedy will probably haunt the nightmares of South Elgin girls basketball players through the summer.
Rockford Boylan's junior center was seemingly everywhere in leading the Titans past South Elgin, 60-54, in the first semifinal of the Class 4A Belvidere North sectional Tuesday night.
Kennedy scored 33 points, grabbed 17 rebounds and appeared to come up with every loose ball as Boylan overcame a 6-point fourth-quarter deficit to pull out the win.
Megan McClure had 17 points for South Elgin (20-12).
Early on, it looked as if the 31-2 Titans would blow the Upstate Eight upstarts out of the gym as they took leads of 14-2 in the first quarter and 36-19 early in the third.
But then a funny thing happened on the way to the Titans' coronation: a Storm rolled in.
South Elgin went on a 27-4 run extending into the fourth quarter. Suddenly, the supremely confident Titans were dribbling out of bounds, throwing away passes and missing open shots. And the Storm was knocking them down.
South Elgin took its first lead of the game on a floater by Casey Brennan 17 seconds into the final period. McClure drained a 3-pointer and Caroline Croft added a bucket to put the Storm up 46-40 with about 5 minutes to play.
Then the Titans settled into a familiar place: the free-throw line. Boylan made 14 of 19 free throws while outscoring the Storm 20-8 the rest of the way.
For the game, Boylan attempted 33 free throws, making 23, while South Elgin went just 2-for-9 from the charity stripe.
South Elgin coach Dan Mandernack said that an unnamed faculty member was teasing him, suggesting that his squad would be huge underdogs to Boylan.
"I said, 'We're going to give them (heck),'" Mandernack said. "I told the girls, 'We're going to give them (heck). We're going to play hard, we're going to play aggressive. We're going to play free, loose, our style.'"
"What happened in that third and fourth quarter with us taking the lead, that was a sight. The gym was rocking, We couldn't miss a shot, and I think we were up six, and we couldn't make free throws."
Brennan, Croft and Ella Winterhalder scored 10 points apiece for the Storm. Madison Waichunas grabbed 6 rebounds as the Storm battled the Titans evenly on the boards, with each team grabbing 24.
With only 2 seniors in Tuesday's starting lineup, the Storm hopes to use the experience to continue building for next year.
"You've got to overcome adversity and the girls did," Mandernack said. "They stuck with it. We've got some real good players coming back. We'll lose some incredible seniors, but we just look forward to summer league.
"I told them to remember this feeling and fight in the offseason so you don't feel this way again, because it hurts. We had a great run. I don't think many people picked us to be here, and they definitely didn't pick us to be up 6 with 4 minutes left against Rockford Boylan."