Maine West easily passes 'Pilgrim' test

Despite winning five games in Hoffman Estates' fifth annual Pilgrim Classic by an average of 52.8 points, don't look for players from Maine West's girls basketball team to be patting themselves on the back.

Visually, it looked like an A+ performance.

But after defeating Lake Park 80-37 in Saturday's championship match against Lake Park (4-1), West senior point guard Allison Pearson wasn't exactly handing out a perfect score.

"I would probably give us a 'B,' " said Pearson who gave her teammates plenty of opportunities to help reach the 80-point mark and finished with 6 assists and 5 points. "We're playing well together and we're playing as hard as we can, but we are not executing as well as we'd like to."

Junior Rachel Kent led the Warriors with a game-high 21 points and 5 steals followed by senior and Army recruit Alisa Fallon (13 points, 4 assists, 4 rebounds, 2 steals) and senior Catherine Johnson (10 points, 5 steals).

Baskets by Lake Park's Kinsey Tweedy (11 points) and Carson Vance (4 points) gave the Lancers a 4-0 lead but West kicked into gear with a 22-3 run to lead 22-7 after one period.

"That's a really, really good team," said Lancers coach Brian Rupp. "They're tenacious on defense, they can score with multiple players. When our starting five is undisciplined and gets fouls early on like we did, that's going to happen against good teams."

Carly Vehrs added 6 points for Lake Park while Sarah Yochem, Caroline Dickerson and Cameron James also had 4 points apiece.

"There were some good stretches we had," Rupp added. "But if we are going to miss open shots, it's going to be hard to beat a team like that. They're a great team. I think they are going places."

One place the Warriors are going is back to gym, to get even better.

"There are lot of things we still need to improve on," said West coach Kim de Marigny. "Especially execution. We want to execute the little things well. We want to pay attention to details."

With the impressive start, teams will be playing plenty of attention to Maine West.

Fifteen Warriors were called upon by de Marigny, and 11 made it into the scoring column. Gabriela Alvarado tossed n 8 points while Jessica Riedl and Dylan VanFleet both had 6.

"We've got a lot of weapons" said de Marigny, whose team averaged 75.6 points in the tourney. "This is a nice way to start. We see the things we need to work on and how we want to execute our offense and work on defense. We played OK but we're not really satisfied with our performance."

The coach credited Pearson with solid playmaking.

"Allison was really tough with her leadership," de Marigny said. "We really need her leadership and it's so evident on the court. She was a vital part of this."

Two 3-pointers by Fallon in a span of three minutes helped stake the Warriors to a 27-9 lead with 6:21 left in the first half.

"We wanted to come here and make a big statement," said Fallon, who helped the Warriors go 5-0 in the same tourney a year ago. "This was our first goal of the season and we accomplished it emphatically."

The Lancers are looking forward to the return of sophomore Darrione Rogers, who rolled her ankle at practice prior to the season.

"We're hoping to have her back next week," Rupp said. "She's a blue-chipper. She tore her ACL in the first four minutes of our first game last year in this tournament. So she has only played four minutes in high school.

"We're going to be a completely different team with her. We're happy with the 4-1 start."

The Warriors were happy to get so many players involved.

"This tournament gets us ready for the season," Pearson said. "What helps is being able to get everyone to play and getting experience. That will help with our depth for later in the season."

Host Hoffman Estates (1-4) dropped its final game of the tourney 46-24 to St. Charles North.

Juniors Kate Mongold and Berry Chukwuyem each scored 6 points for the Hawks while classmates Alysa Dupart (one 3-pointer) and Raven Wilson chipped in 5 apiece.