Zacker, Montini earn chance at tourney final
When it comes to playing in the Montini Christmas Tournament championship game, Broncos senior Zoe MacKay Zacker is a freshman.
"This is my first Christmas tournament ever, and I couldn't be more happy," said MacKay Zacker, who endured a series of serious knee injuries her first three seasons of high school girls basketball. "This is the first time I've gotten to step onto this court in front of the big crowds that everybody looks forward to. And we battled. We played Hersey, we played Marist, who is a great team. We played this team (Mother McAuley), who was undefeated, ranked very high in the state. And just to have, like you said, a young team and to have these freshmen rise to the occasion, it means so much to me.
"I can't wait."
MacKay Zacker will get her chance because the Broncos held on for a dramatic 39-38 victory Friday night against McAuley (15-1) in a tournament semifinal. The Broncos will play Nazareth (14-1) - which defeated Montini 47-40 earlier this season - at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in Lombard.
It almost didn't happen. After Montini (17-1) missed the front end of a 1-and-1 with a 1-point lead and 15.4 seconds to play, the Mighty Macs attacked the basket looking for the game-winning score. Instead freshman forward Tatiana Thomas rose to the occasion for a blocked shot.
"I don't know. It was just my instinct," Thomas said of the block. "I don't even know what came over me. I just knew that they couldn't score, because we have to go to the 'ship, guys."
"She's pretty special for a freshman," Montini coach Jason Nichols said of Thomas. "She was in foul trouble and that hurt us because she has such a prescence on the floor. She's all over the joint. She's got to work on her offensive game a little bit, but for crying out loud, she's a freshman. She's good. She's a tough player."
McAuley rebounded the ball, but a layup somehow rolled off the rim.
"I've been doing this for a while. I've seen a few of those missed layups," Nichols said with a sigh of relief. "I don't know if somebody's looking down on us, but hey, that was good."
Players for both teams hit the floor in search of the second rebound, but the ball squirted out of the scrum and rolled toward midcourt as the final buzzer sounded.
"It came down to one missed layup, but it really was throughout the game, we had a ton of opportunities, they had a ton of opportunities," said MacKay Zacker, who is in new territory, having never played deeper than 10 games into a high school season.
A Sophie Sullivan 3-pointer at the third-quarter buzzer put Montini up for good 30-27. A MacKay Zacker 3 at the 6:51 mark of the fourth made it 35-27.
Montini led 39-32 with three minutes to play when McAuley started its comeback with a Hannah Swiatek basket, followed by a Jenna Badali layup off a steal. Grace Hynes' floater in the lane with 2:01 left cut the Montini lead to 39-38, the final score.
"McAuley's a great team," MacKay Zacker said. "They're so well-coached. They have players who, our coach says sometimes he'd die for."