'Weird' third quarter costs Glenbard West in title game
Less than a half away from a tournament title, the shots stopped going in for the Glenbard West girls basketball team Saturday afternoon at Lincoln-Way East.
To make matters much worse, it seemed as if everything that Griffins guard Katchie Savic fired up did find the bottom of the net.
The end result was a 65-50 victory by the Griffins, who trailed the Hilltoppers 35-31 at the half in this Medieval Classic championship game in Frankfort. While Savic was scoring 8 of her game-high 31 points in the third quarter, Glenbard West managed to make just 1 of 17 shots, leaving the 12-5 Hilltoppers shaking their heads while bringing home a second-place effort.
"Yeah, that was a weird third quarter for us," said Hilltoppers senior Niki Adamski, who had 11 points and 10 rebounds, but like most of her teammates, was blanked in the third quarter. "We were right there with them. They're more of a shooting team and they had more shooters. In the third quarter not very many of our shots went in the rim. It happens, but also we now know what we have to get better at. We have to work on our shooting and also our help defense. We have to hustle back to our players and be there on help."
Lincoln-Way East, which like the Hilltoppers went 3-0 in pool play to advance to the tourney finals, ran its offense to near perfection much of the game, knocking down eight 3s, cutting to the basket for several backdoor layups, and also making good on 16 of 22 foul shots.
"Yeah, they hit a ton of 3s and the kid that scored 31 (Savic), she was outstanding. We struggled to get second-half stops and then we had a hard time putting the ball in the hole," Hilltoppers coach Kristi Faulkner said. "It's a learning experience and we still had a great tournament. It's a season of ups and downs and we'll learn from today's loss."
With Adamski and Taylor Huff crashing the boards and sophomore Maggie Stutelberg connecting on the first three of her game-high six 3s, Glenbard West led 35-31 at the half after a 17-12 edge in the second quarter. The 6-foot Adamski had 9 points and 6 offensive rebounds in the first half, while Huff had 10 points at the break on her way to 12 points and 9 rebounds against the 12-4 Griffins.
"Taylor and I are, like, huge," Adamski said. "We need to get the rebounds. That's something I take pride in. Rebounds are a really big thing and then putting it back up, those are easy points for us. In this tournament we woke up. We've improved and now our chemistry is back on top, so we're excited to go into our conference games.
There were plenty of positives this week, but the Hilltoppers will want to avoid any repeats of what took place in the third quarter.
"That won't happen again. We'll make sure of that," Adamski said.
Savic was named tourney MVP. Stutelberg and Katelyn Heller were each named to the all-tournament team for Glenbard West. Stutelberg finished with 20 points and 6 rebounds in the finale.