No debate about this: Geneva needs Yelle
One of the arguments you always hear fans use in a good MVP debate goes something like this.
"Take LeBron James off Cleveland and the Cavs would be 20 games under .500."
You know what I mean. You can tell how valuable a player is by how that team plays without them.
The same logic goes for the Geneva girls basketball program. Take Kat Yelle off the court and a comfortable lead vanishes just about as quickly as the Vikings built it.
Geneva's junior point guard, who committed to Ohio University at the start of the school year, certainly makes a case for her value with her play on the court. She leads Geneva in scoring, assists and steals and has confidently shouldered a bigger role this year after the graduation of all-time leading scorer Taylor Whitley.
But take Yelle off the court?
Like LeBron, you can argue that's when you see just how much Yelle really means.
It's not a situation 30-0 Geneva likes to be in.
"They get mad at me whenever I get fouls because they don't like it when I'm off the court," Yelle said of her teammates.
Yelle missed the entire second quarter Monday night in the Class 4A Huntley sectional semifinals with two fouls. A 14-2 Geneva lead with Yelle in the game flipped into Cary-Grove winning the second quarter 11-2.
What had looked like a Geneva cakewalk turned into another tense second half.
"She's our point guard," Geneva senior Lauren Wicinski said. "All our guards handle the ball very well but she is the go-to person. We want her to dribble with the ball, we want her to set everything up. It was kind of difficult to adjust to that."
With Yelle on the bench Geneva's offense struggled. The Vikings hit just 1 of 8 shots in the second quarter and committed 6 turnovers.
Guard Sammy Scofield, who gave Geneva a spark with 16 points and three 3-pointers, knows better than anyone how important it is to keep Yelle in the game.
"It is definitely rough," Scofield said. "I tried to do as well as I could but you can't do what Kat does. We lost our way a little bit but when she got back in we got in our flow."
A similar situation arose earlier this year at the McDonald's Shootout against Hllcrest. Yelle again picked up her second foul late in the first quarter.
Nolan pulled Yelle, but when Hillcrest rattled off 9 points in about a minute Nolan had to get Yelle back in the game. Yelle played the rest of the first half without picking up her third foul.
Nolan said her philosophy of keeping players in the game with two first-half fouls depends on the situation.
"I felt in the second quarter we had the lead and could afford to leave her out," Nolan said of Monday night's win. "I felt if she got three in the first half, mentally and emotionally it would have been a hindrance to us. And I knew she would be fired up and ready to go in the second half."
Yelle did pick up both her third and fourth fouls in the second half, both on charging calls after both of her first-quarter fouls came on reaches on Geneva's press.
"I should have been thinking more, we didn't need that, I should have brought it out and set up a play," Yelle said of the charging fouls. "That was my mistake."
Her fourth foul came with 5:07 left in the game and Geneva clinging to a 34-32 lead. Yelle not only finished the game - just as Wicinski did in Geneva's previous win playing the entire fourth quarter with four fouls - she had a key assist and 6 free throws in the final 5:07.
Maybe now that Geneva has won one game missing Wicinski for a key stretch and another missing Yelle for a quarter, the Vikings have their foul woes out of the way and will have their lineup intact for Rockford Boylan Thursday.
Yelle sure hopes so.
"Defensively I get so aggressive at times and in the heat of the moment I forget how many fouls I have," Yelle said. "I have to get better at that to stay on the court for my team."
"She might not have had her best game but she came through when we needed her like she has time and time again," Nolan said.
jlemon@dailyherald.com