IC Catholic sees growth in win over St. Francis

The IC Catholic Prep girls basketball team had already suffered a pair of close defeats to begin this season.

But on Thursday night, the Knights reversed that trend and pulled out a 49-45 win over St. Francis in the Metro Suburban Blue matchup in Elmhurst.

"We lost our first game by 3 points and our last game on Tuesday by 2," said ICCP coach Kelsey James, whose team improved to 3-4 overall and 1-1 in league play. "This shows learning and growing and that's all you can ask for from a young team."

ICCP emerged victorious in large part due to its defense, which forced 22 turnovers, and the scoring of freshman Claire Wagner, who played well beyond her years in pouring in a game-high 20 points.

Her final basket midway through the fourth knotted the score at 42 before Annie Guinan gave her team the lead for good with a pair of free throws.

"Basketball is my favorite sport and I'm just really enjoying playing it," Wagner said. "My teammates are looking for me always and I appreciate it. It feels great to get the win, and I feel like we are going to do good this season."

St. Francis was within 3 in the closing stages, but a steal and layup by Hannah Johnson with 10 seconds left sealed the outcome.

The Spartans (0-5) led 20-13 at the end of the first quarter and 25-24 at halftime before ICCP pulled ahead by as many as 8 in the third.

The visitors, who were led in scoring by the 16 points of Ashley Sullivan and the 11 points of Katelin Chaparro, responded with a 10-0 run to pull in front 42-40.

"This was our best game this season," St. Francis coach Sandy De Craene said. "The energy was there and that makes a big difference. We have a lot of young players, we are basically starting from scratch, so it will take time to rebuild. This was a positive. We came to play today. A couple of shots just didn't go our way."

Jackie Lara also checked into double figures for the Knights with 10 points, including a big bucket late in the fourth.

"Our energy was up all game and we worked hard," said Lara, one of only three seniors on the team. "Everything we worked on in practice came through today. I know there were a couple of rough patches, but we overcame those and the end result was good. We really worked as a team."

Alia Johnson totaled 10 rebounds for ICCP and Gabi Zanoni and Wagner had 7 apiece. Megan Lombardo topped St. Francis with 7 rebounds.