Rosary 68, Yorkville 34

Rosary's basketball team is capable of playing with finesse to beat an opponent whenever necessary.

In Tuesday's opening round of the Class 3A Yorkville regional, finesse was nowhere to be found, and wholly unnecessary.

The Royals (22-5) were bigger, quicker, and deeper than Yorkville, which they topped, 68-34, and used their superior athleticism to beat their opponents into submission as well as on the scoreboard and advance to Thursday's regional final at 7:30 p.m.

Jordan Rettig maneuvered at will in the low post like someone who's shooting hoops by themselves in their own driveway, scoring a game-high 28 points.

"There was an obvious height advantage down low, and we kept working it inside," Rettig said. "My teammates did a great job of getting the assists, and it felt great to help my team out in that way."

Rettig was so dominant that at the end of the third quarter she had outscored the Foxes 28-24. After that, Rosary coach Dave Beebe had the luxury of resting his five starters for the rest of the game.

"We scouted them a bunch of times an saw that they really didn't have a lot of size, and so we had to use our strength to our advantage," Beebe said.

The Royals took the floor with that simple plan in mind, jumped to a fast lead, and were up 18-7 after one quarter.

But Yorkville (8-19), wearing their red road uniforms as the lower seed despite being on its home floor, made some adjustments, and Sara O'Leary racked up 10 points in the second quarter.

"We got off to a great start, but had a bad three or four minute stretch in the second quarter," Beebe said. "We got on them a little bit in the locker room, and wanted to put Yorkville away in the third quarter."

Far from satisfied with their 36-22 halftime lead after scoring the final 6 points of the second quarter, the Royals put the clamps on at the defensive end at the start of the second half, and scored 12 more in a row.

"The second quarter was really rough for us defensively, we didn't play well as a team," said Victoria Alvarez, who led the Royals with 12 assists and 8 steals. "We were pretty upset with that, and knew we had to pick it up."

Yorkville tried to double team Rettig, but that just opened up shots for Faith Jones, who scored 6 of her 14 total points in the third quarter.

"Every game this year, when we've needed somebody to step up, Faith has done that for us," Beebe said.