Hersey, Viator secure happy ending in tourney

It's tough to stop Hersey's Megan Rogowski, especially for 32 minutes.

The 5-foot-9 sophomore guard scored 17 of her game-high 20 points in the second half to help lift the Huskies past Rolling Meadows 62-39 and to the championship of the Season's End girls basketball tourney.

"Megan was 1-of-9 to start the game," said Rolling Meadows coach Todd Hatfield. "We knew she couldn't do that for an entire game. She is so fun to watch. She is an offensive talent beyond belief."

It was the fourth tourney crown in five years for Hersey (20-8) but first for Rogowski.

"It wasn't that she was taking bad shots, they just weren't falling," said Hersey coach Mary Fendley about Rogowski's first half. "You kind of know the law of averages would work out and they did big time in the second half."

"This is the first tourney I've ever won in high school, so it feels really cool," said Rogowski (7-of-8 free throws in the game), who was named to the all-tourney team along with her sister Kelly and junior Kathryn Korff.

Korff did not play Monday because of a sprained ankle and Kelly Rogowski has not been 100 percent.

"Kelly has been a little under the weather and Kathryn will be out for a while with the ankle," said Hersey coach Mary Fendley. "Considering how bad Kelly felt, she played great."

Kelly Rogowski scored 11 points with 2 3-pointers while junior forward Kristen Gierman also had 11 points.

Junior guard Julia Fredian helped direct the offense and chipped in 12 points, including a big 3-point play and a steal and layup in the first quarter when Hersey was building a 13-7 advantage.

"Julia did a nice job running the point to give Kelly a breather," Fendley added about Fredian, also a talented soccer goalkeeper. "And Andrea Perkins was really a catalyst for our defense in the second half."

A reverse layup by junior Kelly Adair brought the Mustangs to within 23-20 with five seconds left in the first half. But Gierman tossed in a layup at the buzzer to make it 25-20.

Fredian started the third quarter with a 3-pointer and Meadows' Kelly Zahorski answered with a 3-point play cutting the Huskies' lead to 27-23.

Hersey then went on an 11-3 run (Megan Rogowski had a 3-point play and a 3-point shot during the rally) and never looked back.

After Zahorski avoided a defender with a nifty 10-foot scoop shot in the lane to make it 50-38 with 3:57 left in the game, the Huskies closed out the game with a 12-1 run.

"That's been the way it has gone for us lately," Hatfield said. "I don't think that we run out of gas. It's just that we can't play at that level for an entire half.

"It hurt when we had four defensive stops at the start of the second half but didn't get any points off them at the other end."

Zahorski led Meadows (8-20) with 13 points while Maddy Urban added 9 and Adair 5.

Urban and Adair were named to the all-tourney team.

"It was nice for Kelly Adair to get an ward like that because she worked so hard this summer," Hatfield said. "And we've been talking to her recently about being aggressive. She is doing a good job with that now so it's nice to see her rewarded. She'll find success if she stays aggressive."

St. Viator 59, Willowbrook 47: There might be teams which wouldn't be able to recover from losing a 12-point lead in less than seven minutes.

St. Viator girls basketball team is not one of them.

Willowbrook surged back from a 35-23 deficit early in the second half and took a 41-39 led with 1:30 left in the third quarter.

But the Lions regained their composure and charged back again to claim a 59-47 triumph in the fifth-place game of the Season's End tournament at Fenton High School.

The Lions (18-10) handed Willowbrook (15-13) only its third loss in 14 games for 2009.

After back-to-back layups by junior Nicole Interrante gave the Warriors a 41-39 lead, junior Mary Calov answered with a layup off an inbounds pass from Kelly Hendricks (7 points) to tie the game at 41-41 after three quarters.

Calov then drilled a 3-pointer and assisted on a 3-pointer by Susan Hohenadel (team-high 16 points and 3 3-pointers) to spark a 13-4 run to start the final period. The Lions never looked back.

"We came out kind of slow in the third quarter," said Calov, who scored 7 points. "When they tied it, we knew we had to bring up our energy and play as a team to get back our lead."

After the back-to-back bombs, Hendricks converted a steal and layup and the Lions were off and running.

"We came out strong and with good energy in the first half (33-23 lead)," said Lions forward Colleen Nolan (7 points). "For some reason, we were flat in the third quarter. Once we got our composure back, we were able to clock ourselves and pull out the game."

Junior forward Ronnie Mack chipped in 9 points, including a 3-pointer for the Lions while teammates Jamie Blenner, Megan McGrath. Bridget Urbanus, Meghan Malone and Mandy Kompanowski all made it into the scoring column.

"We played well," said Lions coach Paul Bjerkness, whose club visits Resurrection on Wednesday for its final regular-season contest. "We brought a lot of energy to the game. I thought we shot the ball better than we did (against Benet Saturday) and we had good defense. We also had good ball movement and we were finding the open person."