Will’s way adds up for Prospect
Taylor Will’s uncle is a math teacher at Prospect High School.
So is Martha Kelly, who is Will’s girls basketball coach at Prospect.
If you do the arithmetic on the box score from Monday’s game between Prospect and Conant, you will see it adds up to a pretty impressive night for Will.
Perhaps she could teach, too — a course on “freshmen playing varsity basketball.”
The 5-foot-11 ninth grader tossed in game-high 16 points as Prospect topped Conant 53-36 in a third-round game of the York Turkey Girls Basketball Tournament in Elmhurst.
“Taylor literally outhustled people on the floor,” Kelly said. “Her hustle got her steals, rebounds and loose balls. She flat out beat people for the ball.”
A year ago, Will was playing for the eighth grade team at South Middle School in Arlington Heights.
“Taylor’s been great to have right from the very first practice,” said Knights senior guard Christina Brucci, who tossed in 10 points with two 3-pointers. “She’s great learning the plays. She has participated in everything we do as a team. She has blended right in.”
Will says learning the plays can be a bit stressful.
“But everyone is helping me out and makes it easy on me,” she said. “I’ve been with my teammates all summer and in a fall league. They’ve been so nice to me and helped me get in the flow.”
Kelly said it was tough to get in a flow in Monday’s game.
“Lot of fouls, lot of stopped plays — it was hard to get into a rhythm,” she said “But I give credit to Conant. They did a great job being aggressive to the basket and creating fouls.”
Prospect (2-1) led 16-9 after one quarter and never looked back. The Knights’ next-best period was the fourth (17 points), when they started out with a 10-2 run, including back-to-back driving baskets by junior Adriane Falagario (10 points).
The Knights meet the host Dukes at 7:30 p.m. today.
“We need to stop fouling,” Brucci said. “We’ll be in trouble if we do that against York. We’ve got to stay on our feet and we can’t reach in. I think we got a little antsy and made some dumb fouls.”
Senior Natalie Kutrumanes (6 points) scored a rebound bank shot to give Conant a 6-4 lead. But Will came up with a steal and layup to tie the game and trigger a 12-1 run.
Maura Benson’s 4-foot jumper off an inbound pass gave the Knights the lead for good.
“Maura did a fantastic job playing inside defense,” Kelly added about the 6-foot senior.
Freshman guard Kelly Lomas led Conant (1-3) with 13 points while senior guard Allie Bauch added 9.
“We had a good effort in the first quarter,” said Conant coach Dan Travers. “But then we started getting beat to loose balls and our intensity was not the same as Saturday (54-20 win over St. Charles North).
“We’ve got to make our free throws (19-of-36) and knock down our open shots. We’ve got to help our defense. And we’ve got to be more consistent on defense. Prospect is a good team and they really opened the dam in the fourth quarter.”