Barrington holds off Carmel's fourth-quarter comeback

The fifth-seeded Barrington girls basketball team quelled Carmel's fourth-quarter comeback efforts to earn a 40-36 victory Wednesday night in a Class 4A regional semifinal at Highland Park High School.

The Fillies (20-10) took a 13-point lead into the final quarter, but turnovers began to take their toll. The 12th-seeded Corsairs (17-11) scored 9 points on Barrington's 8 fourth-quarter turnovers and trailed by only 3 points with 1:12 left in the game.

After scoring just 14 points through the first three quarters, the Corsairs tacked on 22 in the fourth, but that still was not enough to overtake the Fillies.

"They were playing harder defense," Barrington sophomore Abby Kirchoff said. "They were going for the rebounds more than they were earlier in the game. We thought we were so far ahead and we just started to not play as hard. As they caught up, we panicked."

Kirchoff led the Fillies with 13 points and 9 rebounds, while her sister, Anna, tallied 8 points of her own.

Both guards played an integral part in controlling Carmel's Tiffany Hendrickson, who still managed to score a game-high 18 points.

"We did a pretty good job stopping her until that fourth quarter when we just gave her too many second chances," Barrington coach Babbi Barreiro said. "We got a little tired and maybe a little complacent with the lead."

Carmel shot 20 percent in the first half, but that number slowly improved as its shots began to fall late in the game.

"We got some good looks, they just weren't going in for us," Carmel coach Ben Berg said. "Basketball is a game of ebbs and flows and as we started hitting shots we began to get more confident."

Barrington will face fourth-seeded Hersey in the regional final on Friday.