Girls Basketball: Montini pulls away from Loyola

Updated: January 7, 2012 7:36PM

Montini has struggled recently to put teams away in the fourth quarter, but that wasn’t the case on Saturday.

After watching a 15-point lead cut to three by Loyola, the host Broncos went on a 12-0 run to pull away to a 53-38 nonconference victory in Lombard.

“It was good to see us close it,” Montini coach Jason Nichols said.”We closed it at the free-throw line. We had some opportunities where we scored in the halfcourt and hit some big shots, like Kateri’s.”

Sophomore Kateri Stone, who drilled three straight three-pointers in the first quarter to give No. 11 Montini (18-4) a 14-3 lead, delivered the dagger in the fourth quarter.

No. 19 Loyola (14-5), which had its three-game winning streak snapped, had pulled within 32-29 on two free throws by Sarah Elston at the 7:33 mark of the fourth quarter. Montini got two free throws Sara Ross and then Nikia Edom made a steal and found Stone on the right wing for a three-pointer in transition.

It was the 50th three-pointer of the season for Stone, a 6-1 guard, one of four first-year starters for the Broncos.

“We really motivated each other,” said Stone, who finished with 15 points and six rebounds. “We said you’ve got to pull it together. We’ve got to remember all the things that we went over in practice and just really pull through. Every team has a run; it’s our job to shut them down.”

Senior center Tianna Brown, who had 15 points and nine rebounds, played a big role in stopping Loyola’s offense down the stretch. Following Stone’s key trey, she rebounded a Loyola miss and fed freshman point guard Kelsey Bogdan, who found Edom for another three-pointer. Edom then made a steal and went coast-to-coast for a layup and Brown followed with a pair of foul shots to boost the lead to 44-29 midway through the fourth.

The finishing spurt resembled how the Broncos played early in the game in sprinting out to a 20-5 lead as the Ramblers made only one of their first 12 shots.

But Loyola cut the gap to 26-18 at halftime and then 32-27 after three quarters as the Broncos made only 2 of 14 shots in the third quarter.

“It’s rocky. We have some ups and downs,” Stone said. “We’ll take a few steps backward before going forward, so it is definitely a transition. But (Nichols) definitely doesn’t refer to the freshmen and sophomores as young ones any more. We’re becoming leaders.”

Nichols, who was honored before the game for winning his 300th career game back on Nov. 29, is glad to see that.

“We’re so young and our older kids are not the most experienced, so it’s only 22 games in and we’re doing some good things,” Nichols said. “We’re like an amusement park ride. We have moments where you enjoy it and moments where you feel queasy to your stomach, but we’re working. We responded well today and I was pretty pleased.”

Kathleen Stralka led Loyola with 13 points, while Elston had 11 points and six boards off the bench.

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