Glenbard South earns spot in state championship game
NORMAL - Glenbard South has been surprising itself all season. Why stop now?
The Raiders came from behind Friday afternoon to defeat Springfield Sacred Heart-Griffin 32-27 in a Class 3A semifinal at Redbird Arena. They will play Morton at 1 p.m. Saturday in the final. Morton (32-3), a Peoria-area team, defeated Nazareth 65-51 in the first semifinal.
"It makes me really happy just to know that we've worked so hard and it's finally paying off," Raiders senior Maggie Bair said. "I just have really wanted to finish my senior year in the state championship, and to be able to finally do that with some of the best people I know is pretty awesome and it's just really exciting."
The Raiders (27-7) lost three starters to graduation from last year's state third-place team.
"I don't think any of us thought at the beginning of the year that this was going to happen, but we've been working so hard every day in practice and everybody pushes each other," Bair said.
The Raiders trailed 17-10 at halftime.
"We knew we were still in it, but we definitely were not as hyped, I guess, as we could have been," Raiders freshman Gianna Coluzzi said. "But we definitely wanted to go get after it. We wanted to finish it off and make it to the state championship."
"The second quarter was brutal. Wasn't it like 3-2?" Raiders coach Morgan Kasperek said. "That's bad basketball, OK. So we've got to fix that. The next (two) quarters were a lot better."
After scoring 14 points in the first quarter, the Cyclones (29-7) totaled just 13 in the final three periods.
That pace is exactly what the Raiders wanted against a Cyclones team that often scored more than 60 points this season with a high of 92.
"That's our goal is to slow down the game, and 3-2 is slowing down the game," Kasperek said, jokingly. "Maybe setting it back a little bit, but we're slowing it down."
The Raiders won despite making just 28.2 percent of their shots, 15 percent of their 3-pointers. Sacred Heart-Griffin also struggled to make shots.
"We just knew that with the missed shots we had to be patient and get back on defense and make it up on defense," Raiders junior Rocky LaPonte said.
"No matter how much we're down, our defense can keep us in games, and when you have Lauren Cohen guarding their best player you know that you can come back no matter what," Bair added.
Bair, a 6-foot-3 first-team all-stater, was the focus of the Cyclones defense. She still managed 13 points and 16 rebounds.
"As we all know Maggie Bair is a ton," Cyclones coach Steve Klunick said. "We're not used to playing to that size."
Bair was credited with 3 blocked shots.
"It seemed like she altered a lot more than that," Klunick said.
The Raiders took the lead for good with 6:17 left in the fourth quarter on a Bair drive. LaPonte and Cohen each made a pair of free throws in the final minute to seal the win.
Last year's experience playing in the big game showed when the Raiders scored the game's first 5 points and again down the stretch.
"Coming into it already playing on the court really helps. I mean, I'm still nervous; everybody's nervous playing in this game. But we had a lot better attitude knowing what's going to come to us," sophomore guard Lauren Cohen said.