Antioch bounces St. Viator as Borries reaches milestone

Antioch girls basketball coach Tim Borries didn't want his players to know about a milestone he reached Tuesday night.

But they did know something else - how to win.

The Sequoits won for the 20th straight time and 29th for the season with a 51-39 victory over St. Viator in the semifinals of the Class 3A Johnsburg sectional.

It was Borries' 200th career win.

"It took me 10 years and it was something only my wife knew and a couple friends," Borries said. "The game of basketball is not about me. The girls are playing it."

And the top-seeded Sequoits (29-3) played it well enough to reach Thursday's championship game against No. 2 Johnsburg (25-8).

As so often is the case, the Reiser twins led the way with Amy collecting a season-high 22 points while Ashley had 12 points (8-of-11 free throws), 4 rebounds and an assist.

In fact, Amy had 10 points and Ashley had 2 when the Sequoits led 12-11 after one quarter.

"Luckily in those 200 wins, more than 100 were with the Reisers so that's quite nice," Borries said. "And finally, near the end of the game, I told (assistant) Tim Bowen that I was a little nervous going into the game.

"He said 'Why?' and I said I didn't really want to say anything but the 200th win was in the back of my head."

"Happy to help him," Amy Reiser said with a laugh when she heard about the 200th win. "Congrats to him, that's awesome."

St. Viator junior Myia Clark, who scored game-high 23 points, had the Lions' first 8 points until Olivia Solimene tossed home the 3-pointer that made it 12-11.

Amy Reiser's rebound layup gave Antioch a 14-11 lead to start the second quarter. The Sequoits extended it to 21-11 when Taylor Feltner scored on a fastbreak layup, forcing Lions coach Jason Raymond to call time out with 4:34 left in the half.

The Lions scored the final 5 points of the half to get to within 21-16.

"I think the game was more about the first half," Raymond said. "We had 15 turnovers and I believe we only had 16 field goal attempts. We gave up 21 points so we were on a 42-point pace. I will take that any time against Antioch. We just didn't take care of the ball well enough in the first half."

Three-pointers by Clark and Solimene got the Lions to within 24-22 early in the second half. Clark's driving scoop shot got them to within 26-24 with 4:35 left in the period but that's as close as they would get.

Feltner (9 points, 4 rebounds) drilled a 3-pointer and Erika Gallimore (5 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist) hit one a little more than a minute later as Antioch surged ahead 36-28 after three quarters.

"I know they cut it to 2 points and then Taylor Feltner's 3 was huge, and so was Erika's," Borries said.

Viator, which rallied to upset Antioch in the sectional semifinal last year, could never get closer than 7 points in the final period.

Amy Reiser tried to motivate her teammates when St. Viator (16-14) tried to close the deficit.

"I just said to keep boxing out and keep up the effort," she said. I said 'Don't force it,' because we still had the lead. I said we can't let this happen because this is what happened last year. I just reminded the girls."

Borries didn't want to think about the No. 200 for too long.

"Like I said, it's just coaching the game," he said, "I was just blessed the last 10 years to have great talent and last four years really great talent. I really enjoy doing this. Two hundred wins is nice but 204 is more important."

Borries had to credit No. 200 to Bowen.

"I love defense and I knew we had to go one step further with that so that's why I brought on Tim this season to get the defense where it needed to be. We held a pretty good team to 39 points.

"The girls have always played hard defense, but Tim has thrown in a couple of new wrinkles, like trapping, and the girls just responded."

Gallimore, whose driving bank shot put Antioch on top 38-29 early in the final quarter, has been part of the program the past three seasons.

"Between those three girls (Gallimore and the Reisers) they have almost 300 wins," Borries added. "They know what to do to win. I just try not to overcoach them. I try to keep it simple for them."

Raymond is looking forward to coaching the Lions next season.

"It's a solid junior group and the biggest thing is that they get along," Raymond said. "We need to work on consistency with secondary scorers because a lot of teams will key on Myia (Clark) when you get to the playoffs."

Solimene added 7 points with 3 rebounds and 2 assists and senior Jenna Breslin grabbed 12 rebounds in her final high school game. Junior Haley Robinson had 8 rebounds with 2 assists while Mueller had 2 rebounds and a key bucket in the third-quarter rally.

"We talked to the kids about how they couldn't be down after the year we had," Raymond said. "We won back-to-back regionals for the first time in program history. That's a lasting legacy for our seniors (Breslin and Sarah Schade) who have led the program the last few years."

And it was quite a turnaround after the Lions began the season 0-5 in the Schaumburg Thanksgiving tourney.

"I will say we played one of the best schedules in the Chicagoland area," Raymond said. "I will stack it up with anyone. We played a ton of ranked teams. We held together all year long, no matter what happened in games. We ended up 16-14 playing in a sectional. I told the girls they have no reason to walk out of here hanging their heads."

"We kept fighting all the way," Mueller said. "Next season, we'll try to get further than where we are this season," Mueller said. "Last year, we lost in the sectional finals. Next year we'll try to win it."

"It's a team full of seniors next year," Solimene said. "We're just going to bounce back and learn from our mistakes. It's going to be our year. I know it because we are going to work extremely hard.

"We've got a great coach with Jason Raymond and we got great assistant coaches. All of them are just amazing."