South Elgin hands Hampshire first loss of season
The South Elgin girls basketball team didn't have much time to recover - or sleep - after Friday night's tough Upstate Eight Conference loss at East Aurora.
And Saturday's nonconference home game wasn't against just any team - it pitted the Storm against undefeated Hampshire, the No. 10 ranked team in Class 3A.
South Elgin showed again what a dangerous team it can be. The Storm bounced back with a complete-game effort and handed Hampshire its first loss, 75-67, in an entertaining game played before a good-sized Saturday afternoon crowd at South Elgin.
"We're 9-12; so what? The state tournament is coming up and I've always thought we're better than our record looks," said South Elgin coach Tim Prendergast. "Today's game gives us a lot of confidence."
As it should. The Storm, playing without injured senior center Dijon Smith, got its usual steady effort from sophomore Becca Smith, who had a game-high 24 points, but it also got a superlative performance from senior Alyssa Krause, who scored 20 points. She hit 6 of 9 shots, including two 3-pointers, and was a perfect 6 of 6 from the free throw line, including 4 of 4 in the fourth quarter.
"Alyssa was huge today," Prendergast said. "She's a good shooter and she was able to get some good looks today."
Krause deflected the personal credit and chose to look at what the big win will do for the Storm as a team.
"We felt this was a team effort today," she said. "We're getting our team chemistry going and we're finally getting the ball inside more and that frees up the outside game. We really needed this win for our confidence. We played hard (Friday) night and we played hard today."
The Storm was energized from the get-go, jumping out to leads of 6-0 and 10-4 early. South Elgin, which shot 29 of 61 for the game, was 11-for-18 in the first quarter and held as much as a 22-11 lead before the Whip-Purs (18-1) woke up and scored the final 6 points of the period.
Hampshire kept fighting back and held three leads in the second quarter before the teams went to the break tied at 32 and promising an intense second half.
There were two ties and four lead changes before Smith hit 2 free throws with 7:42 left in the game that gave the Storm a 50-49 lead it would not relinquish. Junior Deandra Anderson (8 points) then stepped up for the Storm, scoring three straight baskets - two off offensive rebounds. Smith's bucket with 5:24 left stretched the South Elgin lead to 58-51.
"With Dijon out, Anderson stepped up real nice today," Prendergast said.
Hampshire closed to within 4 at 60-56 when junior Jessica VanDorin hit her second 3-pointer of the game and 65th of the season with 4:06 left. But Krause came down and nailed a 3 just 23 seconds later to make it 63-56 and the Whips never got closer than 4 the rest of the way. Krause made 4 of 4 from the line down the stretch and Sarah Havemann 2 of 2 as the Storm went 10 of 11 from the line in the game.
"I don't look at it is a win or a loss so much as it was a great game," said Hampshire coach Sue Ellett, whose team lost to South Elgin in overtime last year in the first meeting between the two. "We saw some things we need to work on so that the next time we have a situation like this we come out on top.
"(South Elgin) shot well in their gym. They're a good team and I'm glad we have them on the schedule."
Havemann added 11 points for South Elgin, which also held a slight edge on the boards, 33-31. Anderson had 8 rebounds for the Storm.
Cassie Dumoulin and Alex Dumoulin (11 rebounds) had 16 points each to lead Hampshire, which shot 27 of 58. Chrissy Heine scored 15 and Karla Vietinghoff 10 for the Whips.