Klatt, Stevenson dump St. Charles North to reach Komaromy semis
Emory Klatt may be "just" a sophomore, but she played like a veteran for Stevenson's girls basketball team on Tuesday.
Klatt scored 18 points and grabbed 19 rebounds to lead the Patriots past St. Charles North, 55-39, in the quarterfinals of the Komaromy Classic at Dundee-Crown.
Simone Sawyer scored 16 points and Ava Bardic, who recently scored her 1,000th career point, added 14 for the Patriots.
Stevenson advanced to Wednesday's semifinal matchup with North Suburban Conference rival Lake Forest, which got past Maine South in overtime.
The North Stars changed up defenses often to frustrate the Patriots' outside shooters, leaving the middle open for Klatt to clean up long-range misses, take passes from teammates, or create her own shots.
"I always talk about the team energy, and it's always the team energy that drives us," Klatt said.
Led by Klatt, the Patriots (14-1) outrebounded the North Stars 35-24. They hit the offensive boards to create numerous second chances.
Alyssa Hughes did her part to keep the North Stars in the game. She scored 14 of SCN's first 17 points on the way to 25 for the game.
"You've got to credit St. Charles North and the different defenses they threw at us, mixing it up on the fly on each possession," said Stevenson coach Ashley Graham. "Number 3 [Hughes] for them is so talented. We knew that going in and she just gave us everything she had offensively. So you've got to give credit to them, but I'm really happy with our kids, the way they battled, the shots they made, and we got some key defensive stops. We played the whole fourth quarter with them in the bonus and we did really well with that."
Stevenson led just 26-22 at the break but opened the second-half scoring with a Sawyer 3-pointer and slowly pulled away thereafter. The Pats used mini-runs of 6-0 in the third quarter and 13-3 to start the fourth to widen the gap.
"They have so much size and strength inside, we really tried to focus on [Bardic] and [Sawyer] because they're so skilled from the outside and then we were going to take our chances with girls on the inside," said North Stars coach Mike Tomczak. "And it really wasn't first shots that were killing us, it was second and third shots, and with a lot of the different zones we were running, it's difficult to box out. Overall, I'm very proud of our effort, but there's not much you can do about those girls being big and strong."
In other action, South Elgin also claimed a spot in the semifinals. The Storm finally pulled away from pesky Lake Park 61-50 behind 22 points from Zoie Lewis and 21 from Caroline Croft. They will face Barrington in the 6:30 p.m. semifinal on Wednesday.