Libertyville cruises past Cary-Grove for tourney title
Maybe a slow start for Libertyville the day after Christmas was what the Wildcats needed.
Libertyville found the energy it needed with a defensive-minded second quarter that ignited its offense and the Wildcats rolled to a 54-23 victory over Cary-Grove in the championship game of the Libertyville Girls Winter Tournament on Thursday afternoon.
The Wildcats posted their sixth straight victory, as they went 4-0 in the tournament and improved to 10-4, while Cary-Grove dropped to 7-7.
"It was the first game after finals and the first game after Christmas," Libertyville coach Greg Pedersen said. "These games can be interesting. We fought through both successfully, so we were OK. Our second quarter was energetic. Our pacing was there in the first quarter, but our makes and conversions weren't. Then, the second quarter things started to fall into place. It showed that we were playing with energy and we're pushing the ball down the court. You get a feeling you're doing the things you want to do."
Libertyville found itself leading 9-8 after the first 8 minutes with the thoughts that it should have had a bigger margin.
By the second quarter, the Wildcats scored 15 straight points and went on a 22-3 run to take a 31-11 advantage into halftime. Libertyville got a number of its points off full-court pressure and steals that set up the offense.
"We do know that we have a number of powerhouses on offense that can score," said the Wildcats' Margaret Bucher, who had 5 of her 7 points in that second quarter. "We try to start that from our defense. We have a lot of buzz on our team and press a lot with steals getting our energy going. We just needed to start scoring and do the things that we needed to do."
The Wildcats ran away from there the rest of the way.
Freshman Emily Fisher led Libertyville with 12 points, Lydia Crow added 10 and Abigail Frea had 9 including three 3-pointers, one beating the buzzer at halftime.
Cary-Grove has been making strides and playing better basketball in the tournament after three straight victories. The Trojans kept pace with the Wildcats for the first eight minutes and have something to build on.
"When you're a young team like we are, you look for a lot of things that you can improve on," Cary-Grove coach Tony Moretti said. "We've been good for small stretches of time all year. Then, there's some stretches where things get away from you. Honestly, (Libertyville) was one of the best teams we've seen all year. That's a fantastic basketball team. We had a couple things go wrong and we struggled against their press and they pressured us. It kind of got away from us. But, we did play really hard and there's nothing but positive things at the end of the day."
Grace Clarke and Kate Larry each led Cary-Grove with 6 points. each.