Joliet Central ends Neuqua Valley's season

Neuqua Valley ran into a royal blue and gold crew with bad intentions on Wednesday.

Joliet Central opened with nine straight points to cruise to a 68-42 victory over the Wildcats in a Class 4A Plainfield North regional semifinal.

Senior forward Ashley Ishman scored a team-high 11 points and sophomore center Claudia Gallegos added 6 points and 10 rebounds. Sophomore point guard Jalysa Stokes scored 18 points to pace Joliet Central.

The Wildcats (13-16) trailed 9-0 with three minutes left in the first quarter, fell behind 18-2 by the end of the quarter and 25-5 with just under four minutes remaining until halftime.

"They are a very quick team and we made some mistakes," Ishman said. "I'm still proud of my team for playing hard until the end and what they did tonight. Our team showed a lot by coming back and playing hard no matter what the score was."

Joliet Central (22-6) relied on its quickness, especially at the guard spots, and pressure defense to overwhelm the Wildcats for the first two-plus quarters. Numerous Joliet Central guards executed euro-steps for easy layups in the first half.

The Wildcats missed their first nine shots, shot 1 for 12 in the first quarter and committed 11 first-half turnovers. Gallegos ended the scoring drought with a basket at the 2:12 mark of the opening quarter.

"We missed a lot of easy buckets and when you do that, you dig a hole and it's hard to come back," Neuqua Valley coach Mike Williams said. "It was also nerves and they were athletic and physical. But we came back and cut it down. But they went on a run again. We're young. We'll learn from playing in this type of pressure."

Ishman, a four-year varsity player, helped engineer a small comeback. She scored six points late in the second and drilled a 3-pointer to slice the deficit to 32-18 early in the third.

But Joliet Central embarked on another big run to raise the lead back to 51-25 to ice the victory. Neuqua Valley sophomore Ellie Wisner was a bright spot in the loss. She canned a 3-pointer and scored on a runner in the lane on consecutive possessions in the final minutes.

"Ellie hit some nice shots at the end," Williams said. "The seniors set the stage for us, never stopped playing hard and that's half the battle."