Hare, Bartlett topple West Chicago
After trailing much of the second half against visiting West Chicago on Thursday night the Bartlett girls basketball team was able to rally in the fourth quarter to pull out a win by just a "Hare".
That's as in junior Kayla Hare, who scored 14 of her game-high 21 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Hawks to a 46-41 win in the Upstate Eight Valley Division opener for both clubs. Hare did a lot of her damage at the free throw line where she was 12-of-12 in the game and 7-of-7 in the fourth quarter.
"She is our seasoned veteran," Bartlett coach Dave Mello said. "I'm not only looking for her in that situation, but all the girls on the floor are looking to her leadership and she responded in a big way tonight. I think early on she was settling for some outside shots, but in that fourth quarter she became a lot more aggressive attacking the basket. Once she gets to the free throw line she is very comfortable there and is obviously a very good free throw shooter."
The Hawks (3-5, 1-0) headed into the fourth quarter down 29-26, but Hare went right to work on the opening possession, scoring on a driving layup. The Hawks then briefly took the lead 30-29 on a pair of free throws by Taylor Tomasek.
Later in the quarter the Wildcats (4-6, 0-1) had regained the lead 36-35 before Hare put the Hawks up for good 38-36 with her only 3-pointer of the game with 5:14 left to play. Hare wasn't done. Down the stretch she converted a 3-point play, added 4 free throws in the final minute, and had 2 big steals to help seal the win.
"My teammates told me to keep smiling and my coaches told me to keep working hard," Hare said. "They told us to get more aggressive taking the ball to the basket and I think that made the difference. We worked hard and really wanted to get this first conference win."
As a team the Hawks were 24-of-31 from the line compared to just 5-of-15 for the Wildcats.
"That was really the difference in the game," Mello said. "We got much more aggressive going to the basket and did enough to get to the free throw line. We lost a close one to Streamwood on Tuesday and that was our first close game of the year. I think we learned something from that because all-in-all that's about as well as we could have played in the fourth quarter."
Sofia Radice had a game-high 15 points for the Wildcats and Sierra Koenig added 12 points.
"We did a good job on (Hare) for the first three quarters, but she is a really good player and it's hard to keep her down," said West Chicago coach Kim Wallner. "We stopped her from getting out and running on us, but in the half-court sets we didn't rotate over to stop her from driving to the basket especially in that last quarter. Then on the offensive end we are still looking for that third and fourth scorer to help out and take some of the pressure off Sierra and Sofia."