South Elgin pulls off UEC upset
The South Elgin girls basketball team wasn't going to let a second-half lead slip away twice in the same day.
The Storm lost a late advantage to Oak Park-River Forest on Saturday morning in the Oswego East Tournament. They faced Waubonsie Valley in the evening and saw a 12-point second-half lead nearly fade away.
But South Elgin did just enough to hold on and hand the Warriors their first loss with a 74-71 Upstate Eight Conference victory in South Elgin.
"(Losing the lead) started happening again and we were like, 'No way,' " Storm senior Cortney Kumerow said. "We weren't going to lose two games with them coming back at that the end of the game. Thankfully we kept it this time."
South Elgin (8-5, 2-1 UEC) took a 10-point lead, 35-25, after a Genevieve Johnson 3-pointer with 1:05 left in the first half. But the Warriors (9-1, 2-1) scored the final 8 points of the half to cut the deficit 35-33 at the break.
Waubonsie's Britany Upshaw had a steal and layup to open the third qauarter to tie the game at 35-35. The Storm responded with a 12-0 run sparked by a pair of Becca Smith 3-pointers. The lead was still 12, 64-52, after a Kumerow basket.
An 8-0 run got Waubonsie within 3, 66-63. The Storm's lead was 2, 73-71, with 16.2 seconds remaining, but they missed two free throws. Waubonsie had a chance to tie the game but missed a shot in the paint. Kumerow grabbed her 10th rebound and hit 1 of 2 free throws with 6.6 seconds remaining to make it 74-71. The Warriors never got a 3-point attempt off.
"That's definitely the biggest win at the school for these girls," Storm coach Tim Prendergast said. "We didn't really close it out the way I wanted to close it out, but we got the win."
Kumerow, who took advantage of the absence of Waubonsie's injured Rachel Bostick, led the Storm with 22 points and 10 rebounds. Johnson finished with 18 points, including hitting 5 of 6 free throws in the final 1:15. Smith added 17.
Tami Morice scored 26 points to lead the Warriors, who hit only 3 of 11 free throws in the final quarter and 9 of 25 for the game. Tanysha Walls had 18, Keiera Ray had 12 and Jordan Meiers added 10.
"The one thing that I'm proud of that they never gave up," Warriors coach Kris Kalivas said. "We put ourselves in the situation in the last 30 seconds to win. We just didn't convert."