Montini stops Geneva's win streak
Whitney Holloway wasn't about to let Geneva's streak continue on her watch.
Holloway scored 17 points, Whitney Adams had 16 points and 11 rebounds and No. 1 Montini ended No. 3 Geneva's 57-game regular-season winning streak by beating the Vikings 55-44 in Saturday's Geneva Invitational championship game.
“Coach (Jason Nichols) didn't really mention it,” Holloway said, “but we knew. Everyone knows Geneva. It's kind of nice to be the team to end that streak.”
Kat Yelle scored 15 points and Ashley Santos 10 for Geneva (3-1), whose last regular-season loss was in February 2008 to Batavia.
“Today is definitely a learning experience. We needed it,” Santos said. “Now we know the things we need to work on, but we also want to take note of the good things that we did.”
Montini (4-0) led most of the way but held a tenuous 35-34 advantage heading into the fourth quarter. An Adams stickback pushed the lead to 3, and after a Geneva turnover Adams made a gorgeous pass to Tianna Brown for an inside basket. Adams put back another miss to make it 41-34 with 6:06 left.
A Santos jumper momentarily stopped the bleeding for Geneva, but Holloway hit a pair of free throws and buried a corner 3-pointer for a 46-36 lead.
“I was open, coach told me I was going to have a shot down there,” Holloway said, “so I had to take it. You have to have confidence to take the shot.”
“There were a couple times earlier in the game where we had a 6-point or 8-point lead,” Nichols said. “Finally we got that run to put them away.”
Tournament MVP Holloway knocked down three 3-pointers for the game. She averaged 18.8 points over four games.
“We lost a lot of seniors from last year's team that were big scorers,” said Holloway, who also had 6 assists and 5 steals. “I definitely have to step up in that scorer role more.”
Tianna Brown added 10 points and 7 rebounds, and Kiki Wilson tallied 9 points and 7 boards for Montini. The Broncos enjoyed a big advantage inside with Adams and Brown.
“I knew that they were going to try to take the 3-point shot away from me,” said Adams, who hit two 3-pointers in the first half. “I had to find a different way to score, so I crashed the boards as much as I could.”
Montini jumped out to an early 8-2 lead, led 10-8 after a quarter and took a 28-22 advantage into halftime.
Geneva started the third quarter with an 8-0 run and took its first lead at 30-28 with 5:30 left on a Sammy Scofield steal and score in Montini's backcourt. Montini turned the ball over 15 times during the first three quarters, double Geneva, but turned the tables by forcing 6 Vikings turnovers in the fourth quarter.
The Broncos also hit 9 of 10 free throws down the stretch, Wilson making 5 of 6 in the final minutes.
“They had a couple steals to start the fourth quarter that flowed the momentum back their way,” Santos said. “We still tried to fight, but that little run was the difference.”