WW South defeats Naperville North
Naperville North was looking for its fourth consecutive conference win, but the streaky shooting that has plagued the Huskies all season cost them against Wheaton Warrenville South on Thursday night.
The Tigers won 54-43 in Naperville in DuPage Valley Conference play.
The Tigers (17-6, 8-2) opened the second half on a 16-0 run and held Naperville North (9-14, 6-5) without a field goal in the quarter. The Huskies’ only point came on Emily Koch’s free throw with less than a minute remaining in the third.
“The third quarter was a nightmare that we could not wake up from,” Huskies coach Jacquie Discipio said. “I burned through some timeouts, I subbed in everyone, we tried some different options. We were ice, ice cold, we missed free throws. The third quarter was haunting.”
Naperville North refused to quit, however, putting up 21 points in the final quarter behind lights-out 3-point shooting from Jenna Jatczak and Caitlin Knoll. The Huskies cut Wheaton Warrenville South’s lead, which had grown as big as 17 points with 1:39 to play, to just 9 with 49 seconds remaining.
Tigers coach Rob Kroehnke used a deep rotation and relentless pressure from a zone defense to slow the Huskies’ dangerous offense.
“Our defense in the third quarter was just amazing,” he said. “We didn’t do anything different. We just understood what they wanted to do and we did a nice job of containing Swift and keeping Bushman in check and that was pretty much it.”
WW South forced 22 turnovers, including 9 in the second quarter and 7 more in the third. Free throws played an enormous factor the last time these two teams met. WW South went 14 of 43 from the free-throw line in their last meeting on Dec. 7. On this night the Tigers shot a stellar 25 of 32.
WW South was paced by Kasey Gassensmith, who finished with 13 points, including hitting 7 of 8 free throws. The Tigers also got outstanding performances from Meghan Waldron and Kelly Langlas, who finished with 10 points and 5 steals off the bench.