Montini routs St. Edward
A four-game win streak thanks to a new up-tempo style of basketball introduced by St. Edward coach Michelle Dawson had many believing the girls at St. Edward could give undefeated Montini a major hiccup in a Suburban Christian Blue Division clash in Elgin Friday night.
But the up-tempo style of the Green Wave played into the Broncos’ hands, as Montini capitalized on 40 Green Wave turnovers and a 33-4 third quarter to take down St. Edward 87-38 in the teams’ first meeting of the season.
“The team that you saw in the third quarter, that’s who we are,” Broncos coach Jason Nichols said. “We can turn people over. We’re fast, disrupt a lot of things. May be I got to have some patience to understand that we may have some offensive spells because we play so hard. But we can turn people over a lot.”
When it looked like the Green Wave (6-2, 2-1) had the momentum coming out of halftime on an 8-2 run to close the first half, St. Edward coughed it up 14 times in the third as the frantic pace with Montini’s full court press didn’t mesh so well.
St. Edward actually had Montini’s lead down to 8 on Paige Gannon’s offensive rebound put back with 7:20 left but defending Class 3A state champ and top-ranked Montini (7-0, 3-0) fledged a full-on Chicago Bear like blitz defensively with a 33-2 run led by Whitney Holloway, who scored 12 of her game-high 21 points during that stretch. She and two other Broncos combined to nail four 3-pointers in the third, as they shot 60 percent (13 for 20) in the third, 52 percent overall.
Holloway scored back-to-back layups and then nailed a 3 from the left corner with 4:55 left to give Montini a 51-29 lead. She also had 4 steals as Montini collected 20 as a team. Holloway, though, was more proud of the defensive effort.
“Defense wins games,” Holloway said. “Though of course you got to score, but defense wins games. I like to get into the passing lanes in makes easy buckets in transition. We really had to pick it up in the third quarter because that’s when a lot of teams make their run and we wanted to be the ones to make the run and it definitely started on the defensive end.”
“Coming out in the third quarter for some reason we had three-straight turnovers,” Dawson said. “They were pressing us the whole game, but they put more pressure on us, kind of took away the openings that were working for us in the first half.”
The Green Wave had success in the first half, and a 16-point second quarter cut the lead to 10 at halftime. At one point, Montini’s lead was 14 but buckets by Madeline Kerr and Rena Ranallo kept St. Edward in it.
Callie Johnson (12 points) added 9 points in the first half and an 8-2 run to end the second quarter was autographed by Alexandria Lee’s dominant force inside drawing fouls. She added 7 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, but the Wave was outrebounded 31-22 and the defensive pressure was just too much for the Wave in the third. The Wave was 13 of 35 from the field and only attempted 7 shots in the third.
“Defensively, we just had to do a better a job of taking care of the ball in the third quarter,” Dawson said.
Montini’s Kiki Wilson (14 points, 5 steals) and Whitney Adams (13 points, 3 steals) both scored in double figures for the Broncos.