Libertyville captures 13th straight victory

Dressed in pink - socks and hair ribbons - Warren's girls never got in sync.

The Blue Devils couldn't sink shots.

And while Libertyville didn't shoot the basketball much better on Warren's "Pink Out" to promote breast cancer awareness Saturday night, the Wildcats hit enough shots to pull out a 28-16 victory.

"To hold any varsity team under 20 points, I'll take it," coach Kathie Swanson said. "Offensively, I don't know what we were doing."

The Wildcats at least did what they have been doing, and that's winning games. Their 13th win in a row improved their overall record to 19-4 and gave them a North Suburban Conference Lake Division-best 8-2 mark, a half game better than idle Zion-Benton.

"They're just playing well together," Warren coach John Stanczykiewicz said. "It's just one of those magical things during a season when a team just hits their stride. Libertyville's hitting their stride. They've got good outside shooters, and they play well enough to make up for the fact that they really don't have much of an inside game."

Warren (11-12, 4-5), which had won two straight and nine of its last 12, didn't shoot a lot, and when it did, usually missed.

For the game, the Blue Devils shot 6 of 29 (21 percent) and committed 18 turnovers. Their last shot of the game, a desperation heave from the wing, sailed over the backboard.

Libertyville led 7-6 after one quarter, 13-8 at halftime and 25-14 after three.

"Neither team could find much rhythm," said Stanczykiewicz, whose Blue Devils got a pair of first-quarter 3-pointers from Alexis Leneau.

"They had better shooters than we did. We just played with no concept offensively. It's just disappointing to me that we couldn't generate anything."

Libertyville, which was coming off an emotional win on "Senior Night" against Zion-Benton, also struggled to generate offense.

Savannah Trees poured in 10 points, including a 3-pointer in each half, while Alex Haley had 8 points. The Wildcats shot 11 of 37 (30 percent) from the floor and 4 of 13 (31 percent) from the foul line, with a modest 10 turnovers.

Swanson said the Wildcats focused on shutting down 6-foot-3 Jessica Prince, who recently scored 17 points in an overtime win against Stevenson. Prince scored only 2 points, although she did grab a game-best 8 rebounds.

"I thought lately they've done a really good job of getting the ball to Prince," Swanson said. "Prince has become much more of a player the last few weeks since we last played them, so we wanted to take away her inside. I thought we did pretty good against her, and that kind of took them out of the rhythm of what they wanted."

Libertyville used sisters Nicole and Leah Kruckman on Prince, and provided help when needed.

"They really put a lot of bodies on Jessica and she needs to learn how to deal with that," Stanczykiewicz said. "We were never able to rotate the ball quick enough to get a shot and make them pay for helping down on Jess. Some of that's their quickness. They're able to recover very quickly, low to high."