Girls Basketball: Trinity outlasts Fremd

Updated: December 21, 2011 2:42PM

Trinity had one goal Monday – put Saturday’s loss to Whitney Young behind them.

“This game was really important to us,” Trinity junior guard Mikayla Leyden said. “Fremd was ranked and we wanted to show how good we actually are. We just want to put (Saturday’s) game behind us and keep moving forward.”

Megan Podkawa had 21 points, 11 rebound and six assists, Leyden added 14 points and six rebounds, and three other players each had eight points as No. 4 Trinity (8-1) defeated No. 11 Fremd 65-50 in River Forest.

“Tonight was a good comeback for us,” Trinity coach Ed Stritzel said. “You play No. 1 and then play No. 11, but I think the schedule’s going to help us.”

Fremd (9-1) took its final lead at 20-19 on a steal under the basket by Bernie Williams with 3:27 remaining in the second quarter. However, Trinity closed the half on a 10-4 run, then outscored Fremd 16-6 to open the second half.

“I liked our ability to get to the basket,” Fremd coach Dave Yates said. “I liked that we came out strong and hung around for a while. But we kind of died a little bit at the end of the first half. They made that run on us. We needed to keep it closer and we had a hard time doing that.”

Fremd closed to within 51-39 on a three-pointer by Jessi Wiedemann at the third-quarter buzzer, but Podkawa made both ends of the two-shot free-throw opportunity and converted a nice feed from Mallory Gonzalez to extend the lead to 55-39.

Fremd never got closer than 12 points the rest of the way.

“They’re kind of similar to Young in that they run the floor,” Leyden said. “But they didn’t get back on defense as much as we thought they would, and that’s how we got our points.”

Trinity also took advantage of Fremd’s interior defense to score 14 points on offensive putbacks.

“We got killed on the boards,” Yates said. “We’re a better rebounding team than that, but we were excited to play this game to see where we were at. Obviously, they exploited some things we got to work on. They’re a good team. We’ll get better and we’ll learn from this.”

Wiedemann led Fremd with 17 points and freshman Haley Gorecki and junior Ashley McConnell each had 12. Shannon McGinnis, Taylor Nazon and Alyssa dangler each had eight points for Trinity.

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