Young Warren puts damper on Stevenson’s Senior Day
It was Senior Day at Stevenson on Saturday afternoon.
Patriots girls basketball coach Tom Dineen, microphone in hand before the tipoff, got a bit choked up as he paid tribute to seniors Michelle O’Brien, Anna Morrissey, McKinley Imus, Ashley Niedermayer and Micaela Miller.
“I hate doing this,” Dineen, his voice cracking, cracked to spectators and Warren’s visiting Blue Devils after a lengthy pause in the middle of his heartfelt speech. “This is hard for me. I’ve been coaching here only two years, but it seems like I’ve known these five wonderful girls forever. They’re good friends of mine.
“I’m going to miss them.”
After Warren stunned Stevenson 47-42, Blue Devils coach John Stanczykiewicz did not praise one of his seniors.
But there was a pretty good reason for that: Nobody from the Class of 2011 plays varsity ball at Warren.
“Good win, a good win,” Stanczykiewicz said after his youngsters improved to 13-12, 4-7 in the North Suburban Conference Lake Division. “A very enjoyable one, too. And satisfying. Stevenson has the type of program you want to measure yourself against, and I was proud of our girls.
“We hung tough.”
They limited the Pats (18-8, 8-3) to 15 points in the first half, while scoring 23. Warren secured two 12-points leads — 27-15, at 5:47 of the third quarter; 30-18, nearly two minutes later — and survived Stevenson’s 12-2 outburst at the start of the fourth frame.
Dineen’s club tied Warren four times in the last eight minutes, with the final stalemate (42-42) coming via 2 O’Brien free throws at 1:30.
Blue Devils junior center Jessica Prince (10 points, 7 rebounds) answered with a bucket and blocked one of Stevenson’s two 3-point tries in the final minute (classmate Amanda Barger swatted the other).
“The pressure was on, after Stevenson came back,” said Prince, who, along with Barger (15 points, 3 steals), had to sit for a significant chunk of the third quarter because of foul trouble. “I don’t mind the pressure, though; I keep calm and encourage my teammates to take deep breaths when it gets tense.”
Stanczykiewicz claimed he could hear waves of sighs from Warren’s relieved fans as soon as freshman Cassie Christie (6 points) hit a freebie, with 4.5 ticks remaining, to put the visitors ahead 46-42.
“It wasn’t always pretty out there,” he said, alluding to the Blue Devils’ 5-of-12 showing from the free-throw line in the fourth quarter. “I would have given our effort an A-minus/B-plus before those misses.”
Warren reserves Aubri Hazen, Taylor Sheppard and Kristen O’Brien aced the third quarter, while Prince and Barger had to park themselves on pine. Starters Christie and Alexis Leneau (9 points) also helped Warren outscore Stevenson 10-8 in the quarter.
“We had to hold on, hold on, hold on, until the start of the fourth quarter, and those girls did that for us,” said Stanczykiewicz, whose squad held a 33-23 advantage after three quarters.
Pats sophomore guard Kari Moffat got tropical in the final frame, scoring all 7 of her points in that 12-2 run. Teammate O’Brien (12 points, 16 boards, 5 steals) had tallied the first 4 points of the surge.
“We’ll learn from this, move forward,” said Moffat. “We showed a lot of energy there at the end; everybody stepped up.
“We can’t start sluggishly, like we did today.”
Morrissey finished with 10 points for the Pats; Imus contributed 7 points, 5 boards and 3 steals.
Warren sophomore forward Alyssa Phillips netted 7 points and grabbed 9 of her team-high 11 rebounds in the first half.
“We lost this game in the first half,” Dineen admitted. “Warren’s a very good team, the kind of team we’re going to have to do better against in the playoffs. We took a big step backward today; we did not take good care of the basketball (18 turnovers), and our shooting — we didn’t fake enough, and we drifted too often. Things, some of them little, hurt us.”