Girls basketball: Romeoville turns it on in win over Lemont

Updated: January 7, 2012 11:03PM

Romeoville forward Kiera Currie realized the pace and energy level were lacking at the start of Saturday afternoon’s game against Lemont.

“We’ve been struggling with that lately a lot,’’ Currie said. “We’ve got to focus more on coming out hard and finishing strong at the same time.’’

Setting the tone by driving to the basket and crashing the boards, Currie scored 10 of her game-high 17 points in the second quarter to lead Romeoville to a 61-31 home victory following a Southwest Prairie win the night before at Plainfield South.

“Sometimes it’s a little hard, especially coming off a game from last night back-to-back,’’ Currie said of Saturday’s slow start.

“We know teams are going into a 2-3 defense against us, they want to slow us down,’’ Romeoville coach Julio Carrasco said. “We’ve been having major problems with that. We aren’t cutting and we’re relying on our outside shot. We wanted to pick up the pace.’’

Leading 13-10, Romeoville started the second quarter with a press-fueled 7-0 run punctuated by Currie’s steal and driving layup that put the Spartans ahead 20-10 three minutes into the quarter.

“Our coach helped us to see the middle more and to attack,’’ Currie said. “A lot of people started attacking more which got other people open.’’

Romeoville led 31-16 at halftime and 50-21 entering the final quarter.

“They score in spurts,’’ Lemont coach Bill Bozue said. “You look up and boom, you’re down eight to ten more points.’’

Angelica Osusky finished with 12 points and Hillary VanMeerten nine off the bench for Romeoville (12-2). Brianna Harris contributed eight points and eight rebounds. Currie had 10 rebounds and didn’t play in the fourth quarter.

“Teams are double and triple teaming Currie,’’ Carrasco said. “If that happens, somebody is going to be open. Kiera’s doing a great job making passes.’’

Alena Pranckevicius led Lemont (4-13) with seven points.

“Quicker, faster and stronger, definitely,’’ Bozue said of Romeoville. “We didn’t help ourselves with our poor passing. We forced a lot of things. We panicked. We didn’t really have to. There were things open.’’

Next for Romeoville is a period of four games in seven days — Tuesday against Oswego, Friday vs. Plainfield East, Saturday vs. Mt. Assisi and next Monday against T.F. North in the Martin Luther King Day of Hoops at Joliet West.

“That’s going to be a big stretch,’’ Carrasco said.

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