Ellwood, Maine West focus on victory
Trailing 7-4 with under two minutes left in the first quarter Thursday night, Maine West's girls basketball team got down to business against visiting Maine East.
The Warriors rattled off 14 straight points and held the Blue Demons to 4 points over the next 16 minutes en route to a 45-28 victory in the Central Suburban North opener.
"We just had to focus," said Warriors senior forward Megan O'Neill, who scored 10 points, a few on nice assists from fellow post Ellen Coogan.
Senior guard Alli Ellwood was focused on her shot, tossing in a career-high 16 points to lead the Warriors.
"Personally, I'd been in a slump," she said. "I just really focused on hitting my shots and trying to create shots for other people."
Many other people had their chances for the Warriors, as coach Derril Kipp sent 17 players into the contest.
"That was the best part of the game," Kipp said.
Kicking off the Warriors' big run were 3 straight buckets by O'Neil to close out the first quarter with West ahead 10-7.
Coogan (5 assists, 3 steals) made nice passes to set up O'Neill's short bank shots.
"She seals down low and I look for her," said Coogan, who shared top rebounding honors for West (3-3) with junior Kelly Cerri (7 apiece).
Senior guard Sam Acosta (2 assists) added 7 points for the hosts, while Amanda Ollerer (2 steals, 2 assists), Amanda Hoye, Carly Martin and Amy Ksandr all made it into the scoring column with buckets.
"We needed a win," O'Neill said. "But it would have been nice to have played a better game. We still need to execute better on offense."
"Our offense is what is hurting us," Kipp added. "We are not executing it well."
The Blue Demons (1-5) were led by sophomore Angela Jones' 11 points.
"Very disappointing," said second-year Maine East coach Karol Hanusiak about the game's outcome. "There's no other way to describe it. We had a good practice Wednesday. We had a good game plan. We just did not execute. That's the bottom line.
"We were in it in the first quarter, then it got away from us."
St. Viator 46, North Chicago 16: Senior Ronnie Mack, who took four charges, scored 12 points with 6 rebounds and classmate Meghan Malone (3 rebounds, 4 steals) added 8 for the Lions in the nonconference test in Arlington Heights.
Meghan McGrath (5 rebounds) and Taylor Skala (8 steals) each added 6 for the Lions (4-1).
Teammate Emily Leazer chipped in 4 points and 5 rebounds, and Bridget Urbanus (5 points) had the Lions' only 3-pointer.
"Every game we're getting better," said Lions coach Paul Bjerkness. "We are sharing the ball, we're rebounding better and everyone's contributing."