Royals roll to sectional title

Updated: March 23, 2011 2:24PM

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The two-time defending Class 1A champion Hinckley-Big Rock Royals advanced to the super-sectional round yet again with a 63-25 victory over Chicago St. Benedict Thursday night in the Hinckley-Big Rock Sectional final.

"It's the best feeling so far, considering we've done it the last two years but we've lost people," Royals guard Alyssa Baunach said. "Everybody on the team has stepped up and in practice, if we get down, we then take it to the next level and we pull everybody up. It's all team work. It's a great feeling."

It's familiar territory for the core of the Royals (28-3) team, and that experience proved to be too much for the Bengals (23-8), who were making their first sectional final appearance since 2000.

St. Benedict turned the ball over 28 times, resulting in 29 Royals points.

The mistakes turned what could have been a competitive game into a rout, as the Royals expanded an 8-6 lead late in the first quarter to 14-6 after one, and then outscored the Bengals 20-3 in the second quarter - highlighted by a 13-0 run over the final 4:59 of the half.

"We wanted to put a lot of pressure on the guards. When we did that we got a lot of steals and it opened up a lot of transition points for us," HBR forward Tess Godhardt said.

Hinckley-Big Rock was paced by that veteran group - seniors Godhardt (14 points, 6 steals) and Baunach (11 points, 5 rebounds) and juniors Kaitlin Phillips (15 points, 6 rebounds) and Katie Hollis (12 points,12 rebounds).

St. Benedict was led by Alexis Genge with nine points and seven rebounds to go with three steals. Ashley Krysztopik added six points for the Bengals.

The Royals have evolved quite a bit since the 2008-2009 team went 31-3 en route to its first championship, but deep postseason runs is all Phillips, Hollis, Godhardt and Baunach know. They have literally been there, done that - from one-point, nail-biting wins early in the sectional to the pressure of overtime in the state finals.

So playing at home in a sectional championship - the fourth straight for the two H-BR seniors - was a more than comfortable situation.

"We've learned on a big stage," Baunach said. "We keep our composure, we don't let the little things get to us."

In fact, Godhardt and Baunach are the only players on the H-BR roster who even know what it's like to lose in the postseason – they were on the team when Newark beat H-BR on a buzzer-beater in a 2008 sectional final. Since then, the Royals have won 18 consecutive playoff games.

"We just keep telling our teammates it can end at any moment, and it's devastating," Godhardt said. "We tell them how hard it was to go home after that and we just want to play more basketball games. We just tell them it'll be hard if we lose so we have to keep pushing and hope it never happens."

The Royals will face Hanover River Ridge in the DeKalb Super-Sectional on Monday at Northern Illinois University.

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