South Elgin holds off Hampshire in a 63-57 victory

There are no ties in basketball, but if there were Saturday's girls game at Hampshire surely would have left both the host Whip-Purs and visiting South Elgin satisfied after 32 minutes.

But, when Hampshire junior Christina Heine made 1-of-2 free throws with 9.7 seconds to play to tie the nonconference game at 51-51, it meant the fatigued players -and coaches -would have to go four more minutes.

And in those four extra minutes, South Elgin nailed 10-of-10 from the free throw line to escape the new Purple Palace with a hard-fought 63-57 win.

Senior leader Genevieve Johnson sealed the win for the Storm, calmly sinking 4 free throws in the game's final 19 seconds.

"We finished," said Johnson, who scored 8 points and had 4 steals and 2 assists. "You just have to focus and take the right shots and that's what we did at the end. (Hampshire) is a very tough team but we were able to come out on top."

Each team had played a Friday night conference game, yet the energy level was high in front of a good Saturday afternoon crowd in Hampshire's spacious new quarters.

The Storm (13-7) was the aggressor early on, jumping out to a 22-14 lead after one quarter but Hampshire (16-4) rallied back with stronger rebounding and tough defense to close to within 36-33 by halftime.

A helter-skelter first half gave way to a more conservative second half as each team tried to conserve its energy. South Elgin maintained the lead for most of the second half - Hampshire's only lead of the game was at 46-45 after a Heine free throw with 5:13 left in regulation - but a couple of ill-advised Storm shot attempts in the final minute allowed the Whips a chance to win.

Heine, who led the Whips with 20 points and 14 rebounds, could have given Hampshire the lead with 9.7 seconds to go but her second free throw circled the hoop and came out to the waiting hands of 6-foot-2 South Elgin senior Cortney Kumerow. Kumerow, who had a game-high 22 points to go with 10 rebounds and 3 blocked shots, brought the ball down the floor but was double-teamed. She passed to junior guard Sarah Havemann on the baseline and Havemann's potential game-winning shot rimmed out to create overtime.

"Both teams were feeling it," said Kumerow, who played the last 8-plus minutes of the game with 4 fouls.

"We were both tired and slowing down. We knew they were a really good team but we really wanted to pull it out, especially for our assistant coach (Stephanie Smith) because she played (at Hampshire)."

In the overtime period, the Storm opened up a 6-point lead on 6 straight free throws from freshman Becca Smith (19 points, 3 assists, 3 steals) before Hampshire got an inside field goal from Alex Dumoulin with 2:07 to play.

South Elgin maintained its lead, although things got a little scary for the Storm when Whips' senior Christine Schumacher nailed a 3-pointer with 29 seconds left to make it a 59-57 game. But Johnson's accuracy at the line closed things out in the Storm's favor.

"We haven't played a lot of close games so this was good for us," said South Elgin coach Tim Prendergast. "Anytime you can come into this building and win it's good. We could have done some things better down the stretch to put the game away. But we made our free throws and that was the key. Gen Johnson played great defense all day and then at the end she was money at the line."

Dijon Smith added 10 points for the Storm while emerging junior Cassie Dumoulin had 14 for Hampshire and Schumacher 8.

"This game had huge value for us," said Hampshire coach Sue Ellett, whose team competes in Class 3A come postseason time. "I told the kids if you didn't believe in yourselves before this game, you better now. Take away the first four minutes of the game and we played a solid 32 minutes for the first time in two years.

"I thought Cassie Dumoulin was tremendous today and Alex held her own on the boards along with Heine against some big kids. We grew as a team today."