Lialios helps Bison post win at RM

Buffalo Grove's girls basketball team has shown it is quite capable of defeating teams with its perimeter shooting.

But at Rolling Meadows Monday night, the Bison relied quite often on an inside game highlighted by junior Stacey Lialios.

The 5-foot-6 forward muscled her way to a team-high 14 points as Buffalo Grove won its first Mid-Suburban East game under rookie coach Pat Dudle, who happens be a graduate of Rolling Meadows.

"I'll take it," Dudle said. "Our guards (Heather Nisbet, Kelly Mahoney, Nell Boyd, Kaitlin Hillner and KC Dunne) did a nice job of executing and getting the ball into Stacey and she did a nice job finishing."

Lialios scored 9 of her points in the second quarter, when the Bison (7-13, 1-3) outscored Meadows 14-7.

"Yeah, it feels good to get our first conference win," said Lialios, who made 4-of-6 free throws. "It's about time. We knew No. 22 (Mustangs senior forward Kelly Zahorski) was in foul trouble so our guards really tried to get the ball inside."

"We were trying to get it inside a lot to Stacey," Hillner said. "We knew they had foul trouble inside. So we used Michelle (Jackson) and Brittany (Abrahms) a lot, too, and tried to get them the ball in the post."

A beautiful scoop layup from Nisbet (11 points) gave BG a 51-39 lead with 4:40 left in the game.

But Meadows (6-12, 0-4) kept battling to the end, getting a steal and layup by freshman Ann Marie Lynch (game-high 18 points) and a rebound bank shot by Zahorski with 4.7 seconds left to close to within 5 by game's end.

"Rolling Meadows played so hard for 32 minutes," Dudle added. "They never gave up. I thought the fullcourt pressure by Kaitlin Hillner, Nell Boyd and KC Dunne (9 points) helped us extend our lead in the second half. But Meadows battled to the end."

Mustangs first- year coach Todd Hatfield liked his team's determination.

"You've got to be proud of these kids' efforts," said Hatfield, whose team received a rebound layup by Zahorski and a driving layup by Kelly Adair (6 points) to grab a 4-0 lead. "But we just couldn't dig out of the big hole we dug ourselves in the first half.

"Ann Marie was an absolute stud out there. There were moments out there where I'm sure other people wouldn't think she's a freshman. I'm proud of her."

Zahorski and classmate Maddy Urban each added 8 points for the Mustangs while freshman Amanda Gunn had 7.

"The biggest thing that hurt us was that when Nisbet got in foul trouble in the first half, they still were able to go on a run on us," Hatfield added "And they killed us on the boards in the first half which is inexcusable. We did a pretty god job defending the 3-point line after the first quarter."

Andrea DiPrima (10) and Nisbet each had a pair of 3-pointers in the first eight minutes.

"I keep saying this but hopefully the lumps we are taking now will pay off dividends at the end," Hatfield said. "Maybe at state playoff time."

"Offensively, we seemed to be moving the ball well," Lialios added. "But we have to go back and work on defense."

Marian Catholic 58, St. Viator 49: Marian Catholic (16-3, 3-0) handed visiting St. Viator (14-6, 5-1) its first loss in the East Suburban Catholic Conference.