Wheaton North overcomes Monroe's big night
No double-digit lead was safe Thursday night at West Chicago.
Struggling Wheaton North overcame a horrible start to the DuPage Valley Conference game to give its season a boost with a thrilling 66-64 victory against a good Wildcats team.
"We sort of needed this one," Falcons coach Dave Eaton said. "We started off a little slow. Being young we expected a slow start, but we challenged them all week to just relax and stick with it, believe that you can do it together, and they came out and played well together."
"It's just exciting for us to get back on the winning track," Falcons senior Maddie Baillie added. "We bounced back tonight, which was really nice to see, and our bench came up huge with rebounding."
West Chicago (5-3, 2-1) jumped out to a 15-2 lead before the Falcons (3-6, 1-2) responded, cutting the margin to 21-13 after one quarter.
"Our whole team was really hot when we were shooting," Wildcats senior guard Claire Monroe said.
Nobody was hotter than Monroe, who won the Class 4A 3-point shooting contest last spring. Monroe struck for 14 points in the first quarter on 4-of-4 shooting from the field and 3-of-3 shooting at the free-throw line. She finished with a personal-best 28 points, including seven 3-pointers, and added 5 assists.
"We were trying to get a hand in her face," Eaton said. "We were planning for her all week. What a great game she had. She hit some huge shots that kept them in the game. I thought our defense did as well as we could do."
Still, the Wheaton North comeback continued into the second period when the Falcons scored the first 6 points and finally took a 24-23 lead on a Baillie 3-pointer midway through the quarter. The Falcons led 33-28 at halftime.
"Especially the second quarter, that was a big quarter for us," Eaton said, "holding Monroe to 3 points and outscoring them 20-7. That was big."
"We had an off quarter where we let them get back in the game," Monroe said. "I think our defense just let us down tonight."
The Falcons weren't finished in the third quarter, hitting double digits early on a Chrissy Baird putback, their lead peaking at 12 points before the Wildcats cut it to 6 going into the final eight minutes.
"Their shooting, they've got those scorers. They're so good, they're so athletic," Eaton said of the Wildcats. "Allie Tapanes is a kid who can put the ball on the floor, she can put to the rim, she can pull up. She's a tough matchup."
Tapanes made three 3-pointers of her own and finished with 11 points and 4 assists in the losing cause. Laura Panicali added 15 points, 9 in the fourth quarter, to go with 5 rebounds.
West Chicago continued to put the pressure on Wheaton North in the fourth quarter, tying the game at 62 on a Monroe 3-pointer with 3:24 to go.
"We're kind of like the comeback kids," Monroe said. "These past few games we've been down. When we played Naperville North we were down 8 going into the fourth quarter (of an overtime win last week), and this game we were only down 6. We were like, oh, we can do this. We never lost hope."
Junior point guard Reilly Stewart gave the Falcons the lead for good on a pair of free throws with 55.4 seconds to go, and Baillie added two more free throws with 29.5 seconds left.
Baillie led the Falcons with 19 points, Mandy Traversa added 14 and Baird, a 6-foot sophomore, had 14 points, 16 rebounds and 2 blocked shots.