Geneva girls down Batavia 54-33

In her fifth year as head coach of the Geneva girls basketball team, Gina Nolan celebrated win No. 100 in the first game of 2009 for the Vikings Saturday against rival Batavia.

The Vikings also celebrated consecutive win No. 15 this season after topping the Bulldogs 54-33 in Western Sun Conference action in Geneva.

After the game, hugs, handshakes and a bouquet of blue and white flowers were given to Nolan, whose team improved to 15-0, 5-0. In Nolan's time with the Vikings, they never made it past Christmas undefeated - until now.

"It's great, it's exciting, but the fact we won a conference game against Batavia takes precedence more than anything else," Nolan said.

"That's awesome," added Whitley, a four-year starter. "It's really exciting. We had a great crowd and it was a great time to get the 100th win."

The tone was set early, as Lauren Wicinski and Whitley scored the first 7 points of the game for the Vikings. By the end of the quarter, they led 20-6.

Geneva remained ahead in double-digits the rest of the game, despite the Bulldogs (9-2, 3-1) going on an 8-0 run toward the end of the first half.

The Vikings' largest lead of the game was 52-27 after a pair of free throws from Whitley with 3:02 left in the game. She finished with a game-high 20 points.

Wicinski added 14 points, 13 rebounds and 3 blocks while Sam Dudman tallied 10 points and 11 rebounds off the bench for Geneva.

"Sam is such a hard worker; she's done a great job for us all year," Nolan said. "It's such a nice thing for her to come off the bench."

Natalie Tarter led the way for the Bulldogs with 11 points, 7 of which came from the free-throw line.

"Overall as a team, we didn't shoot the ball well," Batavia coach Tim DeBruycker said. "I don't know how many open looks we had, but it seemed like a lot...something was off that we couldn't find tonight."

This was Geneva's first game in 10 days. The Vikings departed 2008 winning all their games at the Naperville North/Benet tournament.

"It was a good break," Nolan said. "It's such a long season. We all had five days off and then came back at it. After today, we play 13 games between now and February, so January is a really busy month."

Batavia hasn't played in two weeks. DeBruycker said the layoff had nothing to do with the way his Bulldogs played.

"We had 4 days of practice this week. I think we just didn't shoot the ball well," DeBruycker said. "We practiced shooting all week. Something got in the girls' heads and (they) decided they couldn't make the big shot."