Out for the season with a knee injury, Kendall Walch started Thursday on Senior Night and was allowed to score the game’s first basket.

Willowbrook rallied from 7 points down in the second half to beat York 51-46 in a West Suburban Conference girls basketball crossover game Wednesday night.

Lyons Township, in essence, can have any number of players score a career-high.It was simply Ally Cesarini’s turn.Cesarini, the Lions junior guard, scored a career-high 22 points — 10 coming in the fourth quarter — to help catapult Lyons past Batavia 63-55 to close the Batavia MLK tournament on Monday.

York junior guards Mariann Blass and Lizzie Baldridge kept firing away on Saturday night.With the Dukes trailing most of the game against highly ranked Marist, Blass and Baldridge played nearly the entire game, hoping to gain valuable insight from the experience.Blass scored a game-high 19 points and Baldridge added 13 in a 63-47 defeat to Marist in the 32nd Annual Coach Derril Kipp Hoopfest at Montini High School.

Kate Gross and Downers Grove North, like so many other teams, have dealt with their share of adversity in this disjointed season.The Trojans had to pull out of a Christmas tournament after advancing to the semifinals. They played Saturday at the 32nd Coach Kipp Hoopsfest without three starters.On top of that, Gross was knocked to the court on multiple occasions during the game, and frequently grabbed trying to get open. Through it all Downers Grove North took a glittering 18-2 record into Saturday.And showed why, even in defeat.

Every time Lyons Township point guard Ella Ormsby was open around the three-point stripe on Thursday, her teammates found her.Then she found the range.Ormsby sank five 3-pointers and scored 15 points, sharing team-high honors with fellow guard Olivia Mezan, to lead the Lions to a 61-43 victory over host Montini in the final game of the Montini Christmas Tournament.It didn’t seem to matter where she was on the court, either. Ormsby sank her first 3 from the left corner off a pass from Ally Cesarini, triggering an 8-0 run that gave the Lions (14-3) a 12-4 lead.Winona State-bound star Hailey Markworth found Ormsby on the right wing for the second 3-pointer, which broke a 22-22 tie in the second quarter.Mezan assisted on Ormsby’s third trey, which came from the left wing and put LT up 28-24 with 1:59 left in the half. That started a 28-8 run that lasted into the early part of the fourth quarter and included two more triples.“She’s very capable of it and we know that,” LT coach Meghan Hutchens said. “I was always taught to feed the hot hand, and she was the hot hand tonight.“We kept letting it ride and letting her feel good about it. She deserved it and hopefully there are more of these games to come for her.”Markworth, who finished with nine points, five assists and four rebounds, wasn’t surprised at Ormsby’s efforts, which were not limited to scoring. The 5-foot-8 junior also led all players with nine rebounds, all on the defensive end, to go with three assists, three steals and a block.“We trust her as a shooter every game and this game, especially, she it up,” Markworth said. “She always gets her hands on everything on defense, so she’s a great player on both ends.”Ormsby is in her second year on varsity but first as a starter. She’s taken over the point guard position, allowing Markworth to play the shooting guard and attack the basket more.“I just felt super confident once my first shot went in,” Ormsby said. “I just wanted to keep shooting.”Ormsby made 5 of 8 shots and while she stopped shooting in the fourth quarter as the Lions protected their large lead, she never ceased making a pest of herself on defense. She deflected a pass out of bounds just before she was subbed out with a minute remaining.“She’s come a long way from the beginning of the season,” Hutchens said. “I think that when your offensive game is flowing for you, a lot of other things start to flow for you.“She knew what her place was in our team defense today and she did her job.”The Lions held Montini (10-5) to 16-for-53 shooting, including a 5-for-24 showing in the second half.“I think communication helped with a lot of it,” Ormsby said. “We’ve been working on communication and help-side defense and not helping strong side.“It is really a collective effort on defense, especially in this game.”It was a collective effort on offense, too. The Lions were again diversified as Mezan and Ormsby were joined in double figures by Cesarini, who had 12 points and three steals. Center Izzy Lee chipped in six points, eight rebounds and two blocks.Shannon Blacher tallied a game-high 17 points for Montini, while Victoria Matulevicius added 13 points.“They are a very good team,” Montini coach Shannon Spanos said. “They have a ton of weapons and we knew that going in.“We knew that they had good shooters and our game plan was to close out on them, but they’re very talented. They are doing well for a reason.”Indeed, the Lions went 3-1 in the tournament, losing only to Naperville North.

Naperville North didn’t exactly head to the Montini Christmas Tournament on a high note, but the Huskies are surely leaving the event and the 2021 calendar year on quite a high.

Great teams typically have stars on the floor, but just as important are the teammates who surround those stars.In Wednesday afternoon action at the Montini Christmas Tournament, Naperville North sharpshooter Kenzie Hare — one of the top scorers in the state the last two seasons — was plagued by foul trouble and never really found her shooting stroke.But this year’s deep Huskies, who are now 15-2 on the year, managed just fine in their 66-57 defeat of a strong Lyons Township squad despite the fact that Hare scored just 11 points.

York (8-4) will play Montini, which rolled over St. Francis Monday, at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday while Burlington Central will face Nazareth at 11:30 a.m. With four teams dropping out of the tournament because of COVID protocols, it has switched to a shootout format.

Senior Claire Hyde and her Wheaton North girls basketball teammates are elated about returning to familiar territory this holiday season. The Falcons again reached the semifinals of their Bill Neibch Holiday Classic by defeating Hinsdale Central 55-32 Thursday.