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Girls Basketball: Oswego East outlasts Batavia
The girls basketball teams for Batavia and Oswego East were both in a little post-holiday funk as they kicked off the second half of the season Tuesday.
Oswego East was able to put together just enough of a lead to keep the Bulldogs at arm’s length throughout its 50-44 nonconference win.
The Wolves led by as many as nine points to improve to 10-5 on the season with conference play kicking back up Friday against Plainfield Central.
“I think both teams were in a little bit of a funk there where they had two days off for the holiday and came back to practice yesterday,” Oswego East coach Abe Carretto said. “We had an up-and-down practice yesterday, and we had an up-and-down game today.”
Batavia (7-8) had some bad news early on, as star sophomore Liza Fruendt was forced to leave the game with 3:28 left in the first with a hand injury. She went to the hospital to have her hand looked at, and the exact injury and the extent of it wasn’t known right after the game.
“We’ll see if it was a dislocated finger or something like that,” Batavia coach Kevin Jensen said. “It was pretty painful for her and the trainer took a look at it and she said that for precautionary reasons, let’s go ahead and have a doctor take a look at the hospital. We’ll see tonight and tomorrow (how she is) and go from there.”
Batavia, which gets back into conference play Wednesday against rival Geneva, was up 7-5 when Fruendt went down. Oswego East scored the last two baskets of the quarter and the Wolves never trailed again, though they were never able to stretch the lead to double figures either. The game’s largest lead happened at the 6:15 mark of the fourth quarter on a Kylee Jackson layup, which gave the Wolves a 38-29 lead. The closest Batavia got down the stretch was four points.
But Jensen was happy with how his team responded to adversity. In addition to the loss of Fruendt, sophomore center Paige Zochert aggravated an ankle injury in the second half and had to come out of the game, and Katie Ryan, who scored 11 points in the loss, fouled out with 3:18 left.
“I was pleased with how everybody played,” Jensen said. “I never feel that good about losing a game, but I don’t have a lot of things to complain about in terms of how we played. That’s been my fight so far, to get us to play hard.”
Arneasa Blair and LeRoyia Campbell each scored 11 points to lead a balanced Oswego East attack. Jackson added 10 for the Wolves. Sami Villareal scored 14 points off the bench to lead Batavia.
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