Second half carries Geneva past Streamwood
After a tough Upstate Eight Conference crossover loss to Bartlett Tuesday night, the Geneva girls basketball team's struggles continued in the first half of the Vikings' UEC River matchup at Streamwood Thursday.
But in the second half, Geneva found its game, and with it the Vikings left Streamwood's gym in a first-place tie in the River standings.
Geneva's defense helped cause 32 Streamwood turnovers and the No. 8 Vikings hit on 13 of 20 shots in the second half to break open a close game and come away with a 61-52 win.
“This put us into a first-place tie and that's awesome,” said Geneva coach Gina Nolan, who continues to battle breast cancer but says she is feeling better and stronger every day.
“Some of our shooting woes followed us here from (Tuesday) but we were able to get our transition game going finally.”
A cat-and-mouse first half of poor shooting and turnovers ended with Geneva (12-4, 3-1) leading 20-18 after Ashley Santos (9 points, 6 rebounds) hit a pull-up jumper in the lane with 2 seconds left in the half.
“We thought we had done things decently in the first half, the shots just weren't falling,” said Nolan, whose team made just 8 of 33 in the first 16 minutes.
The second half belonged to the Vikings. In addition to shooting better, their full court press caused No. 18 Streamwood havoc and was directly responsible for 17 of Geneva's 21 third-quarter points. The Vikes' 12-2 run to open the third quarter and give them a 10-point lead put the Sabres (13-3, 4-1) in catchup mode the rest of the way. Streamwood closed to within 5 points at 38-33 on a Jessica Cerda 3-pointer with 41 seconds left in the third, but Sammy Scofield (13 points) nailed a 3-pointer just before the quarter buzzer and then scored again 50 seconds into the fourth quarter and Streamwood never got closer than 8 points the rest of the way.
“Sammy had a really nice game,” said Nolan, “and Brooke (Binette) did a nice job off the bench. We're a team and we count on everybody to step up and contribute.”
The Vikings were led by senior standout Kat Yelle, who had 15 points, dished out 7 assists and had 6 steals.
“Coming out of the locker room (at halftime) we knew we needed to push it up, get steals and be more aggressive,” Yelle said. “That's what we needed to do to pull away.
“This was a nice win. They were first in our conference and we wanted this game. This was a big game for us.”
Cerda had a strong game for the Sabres, scoring 22 points that included four 3-pointers. Emma Schmidt added 16 and Michelle Tomczak 10, but she spent much of the night in foul trouble and fouled out with 5 minutes to play.
“Too many turnovers and many of them unforced,” lamented Streamwood coach George Rosner, who is still 2 wins shy of 300 for his Streamwood career. “We have three guards and two forwards who can handle the ball so we shouldn't turn the ball over like that. We expected good pressure defense and we expected some turnovers but not that many.
“Michelle was pretty much unguardable tonight but we couldn't keep her on the floor and that hurt.”
While Geneva played Tuesday, Streamwood had been off for 12 days but Rosner wouldn't use that as an excuse.
“I think the 12-day layoff hurt us but that's not an excuse,” he said. “Geneva is a good team but we didn't play our best.”