Vernon Hills nips Cary-Grove

So far, the Vernon Hills girls basketball team has lost only a handful of games.

But the 11-3 Cougars have seen a common denominator in their losses. They've lost leads late.

On Tuesday at the Mundelein Mustang Holiday Classic, Vernon Hills avoided that fate. Narrowly.

The Cougars were up by as many as 12 points in the fourth quarter against Cary-Grove, only to see that lead shrink and shrink and shrink.

But some late free throws by Monica Bahlmann and Haley Lieberman helped Vernon Hills ice a 3-point victory.

"Real proud of the kids for hanging in there," Vernon Hills coach Paul Brettner said. "We've been talking about finishing games. We didn't finish on some of those earlier games that were losses and we didn't really handle ourselves as well as you'd hope. It's nice to see us do real well at the end."

The Cougars had a good fourth quarter overall, thanks in large part to Kasey Firnbach, who scored 9 of her 13 points in the fourth quarter. She also pulled down 4 big rebounds in the quarter.

Vernon Hills had entered the fourth quarter up only 24-21.

"We knew we really needed to step up and score some points in the fourth quarter because it had been a close game early on," Firnbach said. "Everybody was contributing. We got screens going, we got open, we got a couple of plays going. We executed what we've been practicing."

Becky Bahlmann added 8 points for Vernon Hills and Cary-Grove (6-8) got 13 points out of Katie Barker, who is averaging just shy of 20 points a game. The Cougars often face-guarded Barker, one of the better scorers in the area.

"I knew they were going to have a plan for (Barker), and I'm fine with that. Because if she gets double-teamed, someone's going to be wide open," Cary-Grove coach Rod Saffert said. "The problem for us tonight is that we just didn't hit our shots. We had them, we didn't make them, especially in the paint. We missed a lot of shots there. It was a game of missed opportunities for us."