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Girls Basketball: Dundee-Crown comes through in clutch
Updated: December 30, 2011 12:02AM
St. Charles North fouled the wrong two players on the host team Thursday in the 13th place game of the 29th annual Dundee-Crown Charger Classic.
In a back-and-forth game, D-C senior star Ali Sanders went 8-for-8 from the free-throw line in the fourth quarter, and Carlin Faulkner went 3-for-4 as the Chargers emerged a 48-44 winner.
D-C (9-6) finished the tournament at 2-2, its best showing in eight years.
“We’re happy to finish 2-2,” said D-C coach Michelle Russell. “We hit our goal — that’s where we wanted to be.”
Tied at 35 early in the fourth quarter, D-C went on a quick 4-0 run behind a basket from Diamond Williams and two free throws from Sanders. After North cut the deficit to 39-36 with 4:00 left, D-C tallied its remaining nine points from the line. D-C was 12-for-12 from the line in the quarter before Faulkner missed with 29.7 seconds left. By that time, the Chargers had already built a 47-40 lead.
“We all stepped to the line with confidence,” said Faulkner, who finished with 12 points and is getting back into the thick of things after missing time with an ankle injury. “We’ve been working on free throws in practice. We need to make 7-of-10 every practice.”
Sanders finished with a game-high 21 points. Williams netted eight points and grabbed 13 rebounds.
“You gotta value the ball even more when it’s a close game like that and we gave them extra possessions,” said North coach Colleen Brennan. “Our decision-making when we were fouling and who we were fouling… (Sanders) is the only person we were fouling. We’re learning and we have a lot to work on.”
D-C shot just 39 percent (16-of-41) from the field, but finished 17-for-21 from the line. North (5-11) was led by Natalie Winkates, who scored a team-high 13 points. Megan Booe added eight points for the North Stars, who shot 38 percent (16-of-42).
D-C had problems taking care of the ball early, turning it over nine times in the first quarter as North took a 7-6 lead into the second. Sanders then took over, scoring nine of her team’s 14 second-quarter points. Tied at 13 with 2:30 remaining, D-C went on a 7-0 run to take a 20-13 lead with 13.4 seconds left. However, Winkates drained a three at the buzzer to cut the deficit to 20-16 at halftime.
“Our halftime talk was that we had way too many turnovers,” Russell said. “We adjusted to that and we picked up the defensive intensity in the fourth quarter and got a few more turnovers, and we handled the ball down the stretch.”
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