Geneva survives scare at Glenbard South

No matter what Geneva does, the Vikings can't seem to shake Glenbard South.

"(The Raiders) did a nice job on defense, they hit some big shots down the stretch and we turned the ball over a few times," Geneva coach Gina Nolan said. "It's just a matter of executing at the end when we needed to."

It was reminiscent of the teams' last Western Sun Conference meeting, a 62-54 Geneva win in December.

"The nice thing about tonight is we didn't go down nearly as much as we did the last time," Raiders coach Julie Fonda said. "The last time we were down 20 or something like that."

No. 2-ranked Geneva (22-0, 11-0) jumped to a 12-point lead early in the second quarter, but the Raiders narrowed it to 7 by halftime. Then Geneva came out and scored the first 10 points of the third quarter, looking like it was ready to put the Raiders away. The Vikings knew better from experience.

"We knew that they had it and they could score," Nolan said.

Glenbard South (12-9, 7-3) was just getting going, holding Geneva to a Sammy Scofield 3-pointer in the third quarter and 3 Kat Yelle free throws in the final 23.7 seconds.

"Our outside shots were going in a lot at the beginning," Yelle said, "and then towards the end of the game they weren't falling for us."

"I thought we did a tremendous job," Fonda said. "I thought we played good defense, and I thought we made them make mistakes. And I thought we had opportunites. The fourth quarter was an upside for us, big-time. The third quarter was a little bit of a downer."

Maggie Norton's third-quarter basket started an 18-6 Raiders run to close the game. They came up short in part because of how the teams fared at the free-throw line. Yelle made hers - "I just stayed calm at the free-throw line. I had to put them in to keep our lead and keep them from coming back. So I just tried to keep calm," she said- the Raiders didn't, finishing 8 of 17.

"That's horrible," Fonda said. "And that's usually one of our upsides."

Yelle finished with a game-best 18 points, adding 5 steals and 5 assists in what Nolan called "a very Kat game for her." Sophomore Ashley Santos added 10 first-half points.

"She hit some big buckets for us and kind of carried us a little bit and got some momentum going," Nolan said of Santos.

Sophomore Patrice Hicks led the Raiders with 10 points.

"Defensively, we played a tremendous game," Fonda said. "To hold a team like that to 42 points? Outstanding."