Metea Valley fends off Kaneland
What Metea Valley junior guard Bria Walker didn’t know certainly didn’t hurt her.
With her Mustangs having lost nearly all of a 25-point lead against Kaneland in the opening game of the Oswego East Winter Classic Tuesday, Walker stepped back and drained the biggest shot of the game.
Walker’s 23-foot 3-pointer ended a remarkable Kaneland comeback from 44-19 behind to within 50-45 with 4:30 left in the game. Walker’s 3 steadied the Mustangs as they regained control to close the game on a 12-1 run for a 62-46 victory.
Metea Valley (5-7) will play No. 2 seed Andrew at noon Wednesday in the second round while Kaneland (8-3) faces Plainfield North at 9 a.m.
A 20-2 run by Kaneland to end the third quarter followed by another surge early in the fourth had whittled the 25-point deficit to 5 until Walker’s long 3.
“I didn’t actually realize that, but I am glad we stepped it up,” said Walker, who led all scorers with 19 points. “We stopped playing defense and that hurt us. The 3 helped us to keep going.”
The Mustangs used their size advantage to build leads of 18-10 after one quarter and 36-19 at halftime. Six-foot-2 Lori Obendorf (15 points, 14 rebounds) and 5-11 Amira Turner (12 points, 10 rebounds) both finished with double-doubles.
Those two led Metea to a 35-22 advantage on the glass. Turner also had 4 of the team’s 13 steals as the Mustangs forced 26 turnovers.
“The game came down to two things,” Kaneland coach Ernie Colombe said. “We didn’t rebound the way we wanted to and turnovers. We had some unforced turnovers we have to clean up.”
When Walker started the third quarter with a layup and jumper, then Anna Petersen followed with 4 points of her own, the Mustangs had their biggest lead.
A jumper by Kaneland guard Sarah Grams stopped the bleeding. Even when Ashley Prost followed with a 15-footer and Kelly Evers made a hook shot in the lane for six straight points Kaneland was still down 44-25.
But the Knights kept battling, and a long 3-pointer from Ally O’Herron to beat the third-quarter buzzer brought Kaneland within 46-39. Down 50-39 in the fourth, the Knights again scored 6 straight, the final bucket from Marina Schaefer before Walker’s 3 changed the momentum back to Metea.
“We tried to come back with a lot of energy,” said Prost, who led Kaneland with 14 points. “It’s not fun being behind and it was a little discouraging but mainly we were thinking about what we could do to fix it. We felt a lot of it was our mistakes.”
Metea Valley coach Kris Kalivas said her team has been struggling with consistency which played out again Tuesday.
“We have been battling one bad quarter a game and today was the third quarter,” Kalivas said. “I will take some blame, I was trying a little experiment and obviously it didn’t work out so well. The kids did a nice job recovering and I thought we had a nice fourth quarter to seal the victory.”
Kalivas said she tried changing defenses in the third quarter. And after sending the Knights to the line 9 times in the first half, the coach said her team might have been too timid defensively in the second half when they weren’t whistled for a foul until halfway through the fourth quarter.
“Third quarter we played no type of defense. We were lazy,” Walker said. “We needed to play all four quarters.”
Evers joined Prost in double figures for Kaneland with 10 points. Eight different Knights scored.
“We definitely want to build on the third quarter,” Colombe said. “We fought back and we expect the girls to fight back. That’s their personality. That was a good team we played and you can’t have that many mistakes early on and you can’t put yourself in a hole like that.”