Addison Trail speeds past Fenton
Addison Trail had a very good response to an early deficit: 24 consecutive points.
Despite falling behind Fenton by 7 points early in the second quarter, the 12th-seeded Blazers cruised to a 64-30 victory Monday night at the Class 4A St. Charles East girls basketball regional. They will meet No. 5 Wheaton Warrenville South on Tuesday night in the regional semifinals.
"It's a lot of fun when we get our bench involved and our bench is scoring and we're scoring and it's just a good time," said Blazers senior center Diamond Pikulyk, who scored a game-best 21 points with 7 rebounds despite sitting much of the second half. "Our coach (Rob Schader) is happy, we're happy, and that's all that matters."
No. 21 Fenton (3-26) took a first-quarter lead on a pair of Jenny Sanchez 3-pointers and led 22-15 early in the second quarter.
"It was a pretty good one," Fenton coach Tim Anderson said of the first period. "If we had a lot more like that we'd be in a lot better shape. All credit goes to them. They were the better team."
After falling behind by 7 points, Addison Trail (11-15) took over, scoring the next 24 points to take a 39-22 halftime lead.
"The first quarter I just felt like we had a little bit of first-game-of-the-regional jitters," Pikulyk said. "To get that out of the way first quarter, from the second quarter on we were just guns blazing. We were playing the game that we should have been playing all year."
"I was a little worried there after the first quarter," Schader said. "We were not doing anything defensively very well. We weren't pushing the basketball, let them set up their defense."
Marie Baumgartner added 12 points for Addison Trail, 10 of them in that second-quarter run, including a 3-pointer that gave the Blazers the lead for good at the five-minute mark.
"We knew coming out that it could be the last time we hit the court together," Pikulyk said, "and we knew that we had to give all we got or that was going to be the end of our season."
Amari Benbow led Fenton with 12 points. Sanchez finished with 9 points.