Lake Park prevails against Waubonsie Valley

The reason the Lake Park girls basketball team is above .500 and 2-0 in the DuPage Valley Conference is simple.

The Lancers haven't deviated from what has worked, and that was on display Thursday night in their 64-41 victory over host Waubonsie Valley.

"We've been really balanced trying to do what we do," said Lake Park coach Brian Rupp. "Tonight we never got away from what we are trying to do. We're trying to score in different ways."

The Lancers (4-3) had a scoring attack that went up and down the stat sheet led by Jordan Bradley's game-high 17 points. Carson Vance had 11, Jennifer Warfield 9 and Emily Golab 8.

"Jordan has really worked her tail off her junior and senior years to become a scorer. We have some good players," Rupp said.

Lake Park led 15-7 after the first quarter and a 7-0 run midway through the second period gave it its biggest lead to that point at 24-11.

Then Waubonsie (2-4, 0-1) put up its biggest threat of the night against the Lancers, closing out the quarter on a 10-5 run to trail just 29-21 at halftime. Two baskets by Doyin Dada fueled the run.

The Warriors still trailed just by 8 early in the third, but then Lake Park tightened its grip on the game, outscoring Waubonsie 17-7 for the quarter and lead 46-28 at the end of it.

"Going into the game, we knew we had to execute really well, especially on offense by driving the lane and getting 3s," said Bradley, who received the team's game MVP award after the contest.

Freshman Dajour Miles paced Waubonsie's offense with 13 points. Sophomore forward Gina Palasz pulled down a game-high 12 rebounds.

Miles and Palasz were in the starting lineup Thursday along with junior Ragini Sharma, sophomore Caleigh Carmer and junior Abbey Glavin. And with one senior on the roster, the Warriors are a work in progress trying to turn minutes of strong play, which they showed against the Lancers, into a complete game.

"We're a completely different team (from last year)," said Warriors coach David Owles. "We are younger, more athletic and trying to do different things defensively to make up some areas we might struggle with. We didn't execute well tonight. We played hard but struggled at the free-throw line and struggled to score.

"(The players) know it's a process. But we don't want to take too long. We're just trying to consistently improve."