Girls Basketball: Maggie Lyon leads New Trier past Regina

Updated: December 26, 2011 6:21PM

Maggie Lyon has won a lot of games for New Trier over the past four seasons with her offensive skills.

But on Monday it was Lyon’s defense that led the way as the Trevians knocked off Regina 53-27 in the opening round of the Dundee-Crown Charger Classic. That sets up a juicy quarterfinal showdown with local rival Evanston, which used some stifling defense of its own to beat Naperville Central 41-20.

After Meg Rosinski scored the first basket of the game for New Trier (10-2), the 6-1 Lyon ripped off the next nine points for the Trevians, who jumped out to a 13-1 lead and never looked back.

Two of those baskets came as a result of steals by Lyon. The Northwestern recruit tallied 13 of her 17 points in the first half, during which she also recorded all four of her steals.

“She’s tall, athletic and long,” Regina coach Kerry Durham said. “She can go inside, outside, left, right. You try to limit her touches on offense if you possibly can, but defensively we’re short, so our angles are pretty bad when you go against somebody that athletic and tough.”

Lyon kept the pressure on after New Trier’s initial surge. She jumped into the passing lane for a steal and coast-to-coast layup that increased the lead to 31-8 with :41 left in the second quarter.

“[Defense] is definitely my biggest weakness,” Lyon said. “I’ve always thought of that as my weakness, but one of my strengths on defense is reading the passing lanes and getting steals. That’s definitely a strong part of my defense and sometimes when I look for steals, then I get beat and that’s why sometimes my defense isn’t that great.”

New Trier coach Teri Rodgers loves to hear comments like that from Lyon, a guard who can score inside and outside and is always working on her game.

“That’s been the great thing about coaching Maggie for four years is she’s always identifying an area that she needs to get better at and she works to do it,” Rodgers said. “It’s fun to coach a kid like that, who is going to work to get better. She’s a great kid.”

New Trier’s defense was great throughout, but particularly in the first half, when the Panthers (4-9) mustered only two baskets and committed 21 of their 30 turnovers.

“That’s what our problem has been,” Durham said. “In the first half I don’t think we even hit the rim a lot of times. We rushed a lot of shots and they’re still learning a lot of stuff that we’re trying to put in.”

The Trevians scored the first eight points of the second half, upping their cushion to 39-10 on a baseline jumper by Isabella Bosco at the 4:46 mark. Rosinski scored eight points, Alexa Czyzynski had seven points and Bosco six for the Trevians, who spread 15 steals among 10 different players.

“All week we’ve been practicing different defenses and changing it up with different trapping and then regular man just to keep the offense guessing,” Lyon said. “I think we executed really well today and it was good practice for the rest of the tournament.”

The Trevians are expected to make a strong run at winning the tournament for the second time in three years, with an eye on an even bigger tournament to come.

“We’ve talked all year that the way you win a state championship is by defense,” Rodgers said. “We talked a lot before the game about how this could be a prelude to the state tournament because you [win] and you get to keep playing in the championship bracket. So we kind of looked at this as a way to think about the state tournament and obviously we want to start that on defense. I was pleased with that.”

Carolina Adamczyk led Regina with eight points and five rebounds. Margaret Palmer added seven points off the bench.

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