Aurora Christian holds off Lisle
Megan Hart's right shoulder was too sore for her to shake hands after Wednesday's girls basketball game at Lisle, but it wasn't too sore for the Aurora Christian senior forward to hurt the Lions.
Hart grabbed 6 rebounds and scored 4 points down the stretch with that balky shoulder, and the Eagles barely held off the Lions' comeback bid for a 35-32 nonconference victory. Hart finished with 8 points and 14 rebounds.
"I don't know, it popped out. I think I have a pinched nerve or something," Hart said of the injury that occurred in the first half. "It's OK."
The Eagles led from start to finish, but the Lions made them sweat out the finish.
"We knew it was senior night, big night for the game, so they were going to go on a run and we expected that," Hart said. "We just have to keep our composure. We know how to finish a game, and we did."
The Eagles (16-7) looked like they were ready to blow out the Lions (12-15) when Dannielle Lopez scored off a Tori Henning assist midway through the third quarter. That gave the Eagles a 25-14 lead, their biggest of the game.
"It was kinda ugly," Eagles coach Burney Wilkie said. "Offensively, we weren't great by any stretch of the imagination. I don't think our two leading scorers came close to double digits tonight. But I thought our bigs really stepped up offensively and defensively. I was really happy with them. And we defended well."
The Lions scored the next 8 points, however, pulling within 3 on a 3-pointer by freshman Emma Rossin with 1:47 left in the third. Aurora Christian's Alexandra Fry answered right away with a 3-pointer of her own, the Eagles' only basket from beyond the arc.
The Lions kept plugging away in the fourth quarter. Another Rossin 3-pointer from the left corner cut the Eagles' lead to 31-29 with 3:30 to play, but this time Hart answered with a basket to give the Eagles some breathing room again.
Lisle senior guard Natalie Takahashi's 3-pointer with 2:45 to play brought the Lions within a point, but Hart made a pair of free throws at 1:56, the last scoring for either team.
"I was like, I don't know about you guys but this is my last (home) game," Takahashi said. "I'm not going down without a fight."
Free throws were a problem for the Lions. They made just 1 of 12 in the fourth quarter, 6 of 20 for the game.
"We just needed a couple here or there," Lisle coach Nick Balaban said. "... The effort was great, but boy, we just couldn't knock down those throws."
Lopez finished with a team-best 10 points, 8 of them in the first half to get the Eagles off to a good start. She also grabbed 8 rebounds before fouling out.
"Second game in a row she's done that," Wilkie said. "And then she gets in foul trouble. Kind of a pattern. But Danny's been playing great for us lately."
The loss couldn't ruin senior night for Lisle seniors Takahashi, Corrie Hutchison and Carolynn Keleher.
"It was really special, my teammates decorating the gym and supporting me, and in the locker room they were like, Have a good time tonight," said Takahashi, who finished with a game-best 15 points, plus 6 rebounds and 3 steals. "It really meant a lot playing on this floor for the last time, so I tried to put everything I had out there."