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Stritzel, Nazareth deny Warren

Warren's girls basketball team had a shot at the Niles North tournament championship if it could get past unbeaten Nazareth Academy on Friday morning.

Annie Stritzel had other ideas, however. The junior posted a double-double of 30 points and 12 rebounds to go along with 4 steals to lead the Roadrunners to a 50-36 win on day-four action of the tourney in Skokie.

Warren dropped to 2-2 and will play Taft at 11 a.m. Saturday in its tourney finale. Nazareth, which improved to 4-0, plays host Niles North at 12:30 p.m.

"I thought the girls showed effort, even though it was a day after Thanksgiving," Warren coach John Stanczykiewicz said. "We need to play with more composure when teams are going to play unusual defenses. (Nazareth) played a triangle and two the whole game. When we play defenses that are designed to stop Kaylen (Dickson) or Jordyn (Hughes), whether a box and one or triangle and two, we need to learn to play better together. We didn't do that until the second half, when we got great minutes from Breleigh Gula and Abbie Mellican. But we need more than those two for support."

The Blue Devils' other loss is to Proviso East, which is another quality team.

"We will learn," Stanczykiewicz said. "It's good for us because we will see this in the future. We'll see these defenses again, and this gives us a sense of what we've got to do. We'll coach them up."

Eastern Illinois-bound Hughes led Warren with 16 points and Wake Forest-bound Dickson added eight. Stritzel's buzzer-beating 3-pointer ended the opening quarter and completed a 7-0 run for a 13-6 lead.

Nazareth continued its run in the second quarter with nine more unanswered points. The Roadrunners' 6-foot-4 Alyssa Geary (9 points) dropped in a 3-pointer to extend the lead to 22-6 lead with 5:40 left before halftime.

The Roadrunners carried a 26-15 advantage into the break. The Blue Devils chipped away in the third quarter, as Gula hit a short jumper to cut the Warren deficit to 30-22 with 1:25 left. But Nazareth controlled the play behind Stritzel, who scored the next six points, and the lead was 36-23 entering the fourth.

"We really don't take anyone lightly," Nazareth coach Eddie Stritzel said. "We knew that (Warren) had two big-time Division I players. We just had to limit their touches and slow the game down a little bit. We usually score in the high 60s, but we knew it might slow the game down a bit. We just wanted to get the proper help on those two players. They are two excellent players. If you hold a team like that to 36 points, that's a pretty amazing job."

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