Glenbard South defense in postseason form

In its last game before next week's Class 3A University High regional, Glenbard South wanted to see if its defense is ready for the postseason.

It is.

The Raiders celebrated senior night Friday by holding DeKalb to 10 first-half points in a 46-31 Western Sun Conference victory in Glen Ellyn.

"I didn't think it was going to be that big of a blowout, but we came out really strong and got a lot of easy buckets in the beginning," guard Meghan Pipal said. "Our press, we were converting on it, getting steals, getting layups."

The Raiders (16-11, 10-4) scored the game's first 8 points to take a 12-5 lead after one quarter. That margin grew to 17 points at halftime, peaking at 19 in the third quarter.

The Raiders held DeKalb to 21 percent shooting for the game. They blocked 8 DeKalb shots and grabbed 18 steals.

"That's kind of what we pride ourselves on is defense," Raiders coach Julie Fonda said. "We work hard on it. We work hard on covering the spots that we covered, and they did a good job of responding."

The victory gives the Raiders plenty of momentum going into Tuesday's night's playoff opener in Chicago against Monday's Gage Park-DuSable winner.

"We're really focused on winning a regional," said Pipal, one of eight Raiders seniors honored before the game, "because we want to do the same thing as last year and finish up on a strong note at the end of our senior year."

Pipal and sophomore center Neveva Markovic each scored a game-high 14 points.