Barrington to play for Komaromy title for first time
Barrington's girls basketball team has been participating in the Dundee-Crown Komaromy Classic for the past 10 years under hall of fame coach Babbi Barreiro.
For the first time, Barreiro will bring the Fillies to Carpentersville for a championship game of the 38th annual tradition-rich tourney named for D-C's longtime hall of fame girls basketball coach Joe Komaromy.
Led on offense by junior Sophie Swanson (19 points) and sophomore Molly O'Riordan (16 points), the Fillies blitzed South Elgin 62-44 in Wednesday's semifinal.
"I think Barrington is a top-ten team in the state, I really do," said Storm coach Dan Mandernack, whose team is 12-2. "They've got great shooters and rebounders, and I believe No. 31 (Swanson) is probably all-state."
Barrington (11-4) will face Stevenson (15-1) for the D-C title at 6:30 p.m.
"It will be a tough game," said Barreiro, whose team lost a nonconference game to the Patriots, 52-41, on Dec. 13 at Barrington. "But we'll be here, we'll play hard and we are looking forward to it."
With the score tied 5-5 on Wednesday, it was all forward movement on the scoreboard for Barrington.
The Fillies gained the lead for good when Swanson zipped a nice bounce pass to Allison Funk, who converted the layup with 3:34 left in the first quarter.
It sparked a 13-0 run that started with Swanson's driving 8-foot bank shot and ended with free throws from Gwen Adler with 48 seconds left. A 3-pointer by South Elgin junior Caitlyn Tolerino got the Storm to within 18-8 after one quarter.
However, the Fillies retained the momentum into the second quarter, scoring the first 9 points for a 27-8 lead that came on Swanson's 3-pointer. It was another 3-pointer by South Elgin's Ella Winterhalder that ended the Fillies' rally. Barrington took its biggest lead of the half at 31-11 on a pair of free throws by Laura Mahlum and led 33-19 at intermission.
South Elgin never got closer than 13 points in the final 16 minutes.
"We've never been in the championship so this was really nice," said Swanson, who added 6 rebounds and 3 steals and was coming off a school-record 37 point performance the night before against Fenwick. "We just played together as a team. South Elgin was a good team. Their defense is pretty strong so we just had to run our offense. We focused on running it better in the second half and we did, which helped us maintain the lead."
Adler had a double-double (10 points, 11 rebounds) along with 4 steals and an assist, Mahlum also had 10 points with 6 rebounds, 3 steals and 2 assists.
O'Riordan also had a double-double, collecting 10 rebounds and 5 assists.
"I thought Molly played a really nice game," Barreiro said. "Obviously, Sophie was steady as normal and I thought Gwen Adler was just a huge presence for us in the first quarter with rebounding, some putbacks and steals.
"I thought we played a pretty nice first half as a team. I thought we shot the ball well and defensively we took them out of what they wanted to do. And I thought our press was effective, too, so that was nice. "
Leading the way for the Storm were the 5-foot-5 senior Winterhalder (12 points, 4 rebounds) and Tolentino (8 points, 5 rebounds). Caroline Croft and Raina Yang each chipped in 6 points while 5-foot-9 junior guard Zoie Lewis pulled down a team-high 12 rebounds.
"We are a defense-first team," Mandernack said. "We're extremely small, starting basically five point guards. Barrington forced a lot of our turnovers but we had a lot of unforced turnovers in the first half.
"We told our girls (at half) we were playing like it was the first game of the Thanksgiving tourney at Dundee-Crown, not the final four of the Christmas tourney."
But Mandernack called it a "great experience" for his girls.
"They never gave up," he said. "I think our second unit kind of helped us get back into the game at the end of the first half. But we couldn't control the offensive boards, They got too many second-chance opportunities and it wasn't from a lack of effort. It was just the size difference."