Crystal Lake South surprises Huntley
Crystal Lake South girls basketball coach Mark Mucha could finally breathe a little easier.
After losing 7 straight games to Huntley during Mucha's 3-year tenure as head coach, the Gators broke the drought with a hard-fought 35-27 win over the Red Raiders in a Fox Valley Conference game in Crystal Lake Monday night.
"These varsity girls have never had a win against Huntley," said Mucha. "Huntley has ended our season the last two years so this was a nice win against a quality program. We don't have to pump the kids up for this game. We came out with a ton of energy and probably played our best first half of the season."
The Gators (11-10, 7-4) put on display an offensive and defensive clinic during the first 16 minutes.
Connecting on 5-of-8 shots from the field including a pair of 3-pointers from Kelly Gaede and a trey from Maddie Bush, the Gators raced out to a 14-4 advantage after 1 quarter of play.
South's biggest lead of the first half was 17, 26-9, after a layup by Bush with 46 seconds remaining.
Huntley's lone highlight of the first half was a 30-foot 3-pointer at the buzzer by Abbey Brown to cut the Gators' lead to 26-12 at the half.
Scoring only 9 points during the final 16 minutes, South had to fight off a valiant rally by the Red Raiders (12-10, 7-3), who are now tied with Hampshire in the loss column for first place in the FVC. Those two teams meet Saturday at Huntley.
A 3 from Melissa Moffett with 47 ticks remaining cut the Gator advantage to 33-27 but the Red Raiders couldn't get any closer.
"You can't play 16 minutes against a quality team like South and expect to win," said Huntley coach Steve Raethz. "This is the second game in three days we haven't come ready to play and got ourselves in a big hole. It is a disturbing pattern. Give South credit - they came out with great intensity and energy and totally outplayed us in the first half. They got every rebound, deflection and loose ball. The positive is we did play a good second half and we can build on that."
The Gators, who were hampered by woeful free throw shooting (6-of-21, 29 percent), were paced by Bush with 11 points, all in the first half. Gaede scored 7 with a pair of 3s in the first quarter and Anna Sevcik (13 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 blocked shots) and Taylor Jozefowicz tallied 6 each.
'This is a great win," said Sevcik. "We have had so many tough losses against them. It is great to finally beat them and stay in the race to win the conference."
Morgan Clausen paced Huntley with 9 points.