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Girls Basketball: South Elgin tops Streamwood to claim elusive regional title
| Andrew A. Nelles~For Sun-Times Media |
Updated: February 18, 2012 12:00AM
Becca Smith’s outstanding basketball career and South Elgin’s girls basketball program lacked the same thing — a regional championship.
Smith and her Storm teammates got it Friday night on their own court by dominating Streamwood in the second half for a 66-50 victory in the title game of the South Elgin Class 4A Regional, then celebrated in the closing seconds by dousing an unsuspecting coach Tim Prendergast while he sat on the bench with a vat of sports drink.
“My freshman year we had our regional here and got knocked off the first game,” Smith said. “And this year, it’s like a second chance and we capitalized on it.
“It was a complete team effort. It was amazing.”
Smith scored a game-high 26 points to go with 10 rebounds and six assists, Savanah Uveges contributed 15 points and five steals, and Kennede Miller helped contain Streamwood inside threat Hannah McGlone as the Storm earned a spot in the McHenry Class 4A Sectional at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday against Cary-Grove.
“I felt like our speed was too much for them throughout the night,” Prendergast said. “I thought Kennede Miller did a fantastic job on Hannah McGlone. That was the key.
“Our main focus was to stop McGlone. We felt like if we could hold her below 15 points it would be all right.”
McGlone got into immediate foul trouble, sat out most of the first half, and couldn’t be as aggressive on the boards. Two nights after scoring 25 points and making 14 rebounds, she was held to seven points and five rebounds.
“We planned to play diamond-and-two, so I was going to be guarding her,” Miller said. “My team really helped out back side. She was really tough.”
The top-seeded Storm (19-10) took a 36-26 lead into the locker room thanks largely to an 11-point first quarter by Smith. Even without McGlone, Streamwood fought back behind a 12-point effort from Deja Moore and 19 points from Jessica Cerda.
The Sabres pulled within 46-39 on a McGlone layup with 1:55 left in the third quarter, but never got closer. A minute later they missed two layup tries that would have cut it to 48-41. When Alexa Matison drilled a three-pointer just before the buzzer for a 51-39 lead, it foretold the end for Streamwood, because the smaller, quicker Storm went to the “ice” or spread offense and ate clock while getting one good look at the basket after the other.
South Elgin scored eight of the first 10 fourth-quarter points from in the paint and blew open the contest.
“Hannah’s foul trouble, that was the key,” Sabres coach George Rosner said. “That started everything right off. But we were OK, we were right where we wanted to be. You know, calls are made, they call what they see. But we came in the locker room at halftime down 10 with Hannah playing very little.
“When we missed those two straight layups, that was a key.”
The smaller Storm, which shot 46 percent from the floor (25-of-54), outrebounded Streamwood 38-22 while holding the Sabres (15-14) to 39 percent from the floor (18-of-46).
“I’m disappointed, but understand that 15 wins and when you get second in the conference after what we had to deal with (injuries to three key players), we’re proud of what we accomplished,” Rosner said. “We didn’t start a senior. And now it’s left to the ones that are left to develop and work harder to get better.”
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