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Girls Basketball: South Elgin’s Smith scores 2,000th career point in blowout win
For senior guard Becca Smith and her South Elgin teammates on Wednesday in their own Class 4A regional, it was a matter of when, and not if.
The top-seeded Storm needed only a few minutes to turn the contest into a rout against fourth-seeded Larkin, and for Smith, the “when” came at the end of the first half of a 77-40 South Elgin victory.
Needing 19 points to hit a phenomenal 2,000 for her high school career, Smith hit a driving, one-handed banker in the lane a few feet from the basket as her body was starting to turn sideways with 15.8 seconds left in the first half. The game was stopped and a banner unfurled denoting the double millennium mark as teammates mobbed the Loyola-bound standout.
“It’s just a huge weight off my shoulders,” Smith said. “Now I can focus on winning the regional and making sectionals.”
Smith finished with 21 points, seven assists, and seven rebounds before departing for the bench midway through the third quarter.
“Thanks goes out to teammates and family and everybody who supported me,” she said. “I’ve seen people in the paper getting 1,000 and I was just thinking, ‘2,000, it’s crazy how many points that is.’
“I mean, it’s been a long journey since my freshman year. I just had tons of help from my teammates over the years and I’m definitely blessed.”
Smith laughed about the way she seemed to be headed for the 19 points needed early in the second quarter, but three straight shots that seemed headed into the bucket all bounded away before she got the 2,000th point.
“I couldn’t believe that,” she said. “But I knew it was going to happen.”
Accomplishing the milestone in the postseason opener was important, according to South Elgin coach Tim Prendergast, whose team now plays its first regional championship game ever on Friday night against either Streamwood or Dundee-Crown.
“It’s a lot of points, it really is,” he said. “You’ve got to play four years, be healthy and she just puts the ball in the basket.
“We got that out of the way and now the goal is to win the regional and go see what we can do at sectionals.”
Smith had nine after a first quarter when the Storm (18-10) charged out to a 29-8 lead behind 60 percent shooting from the field (12-of-20). They went on to shoot 58 percent from the floor for the first half (25-of-43).
In the first quarter, South Elgin hit five three-pointers.
“We got off to a really good start, just lights-out shooting,” Prendergast said. “I knew we were capable of doing that at some point this year. We’ve been shooting the ball well all year, but never to that degree.
“Any time a team has played zone against us we have done really well.”
South Elgin got scoring from 15 different players, including 10 from Lania Robinson and six each from Savanah Uveges and Kennede Miller.
Eight Larkin first-quarter turnovers helped the early South Elgin point rush.
“The way they came out firing from the outside, that definitely hurt us,” Larkin coach Tissanie Simmons said. “And our turnovers definitely kind of handed the game to them.
“They were just on, they were hot, it seemed like they were not missing anything.”
Larkin (5-23) had 12 points from Abigail Alvarez and nine from Jill Casebeer.
“I was proud of the effort my girls gave during the season,” Simmons said. “I thought we could have shown up better on (the scoreboard) tonight, but I’m proud of all the work they’ve put in.”
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