St. Viator retains hot hand, downs Nazareth

The Lions are roaring after a 1-6 start.

St. Viator's girls basketball team won for the seventh time in its last 10 games with a 53-31 East Suburban Catholic Conference victory over visiting Nazareth Academy on Monday night at the Cahill Gymnasium.

"We are moving forward and upward," said junior guard Michaela Mueller, who scored 9 points to join Lions' leaders Olivia Solimene (14 points) and Loreto Dugo (9 points). "That Schaumburg tournament (0-5 to start the season) helped us take a look at ourselves, assess things, and move forward in our practices."

The Lions improved to 8-9 and 2-2 in the ESCC (losses to two-time defending Class 4A state champ Benet and 2014 4A state champ Marian Catholic).

The Roadrunners dropped to 6-8 and 1-1.

"After our loss to Benet, we've been playing more up-tempo basketball along with pressing and putting more pressure on the basketball," said Lions coach Jason Raymond, whose team hosts Buffalo Grove (6-8) on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. "We pretty much used the first half of the season to identify who we were and what areas we needed to improve on."

The Lions jumped ahead 13-3 after one quarter and never looked back.

Solimene hit two of her four 3-pointers in the first quarter.

Junior Myia Clark (6 points) connected for a pair of 3-pointers in the game while Elise Horbach and Maddie Fitzpatrick each had one. Haley Robinson chipped in 7 points for Viator.