Montini gets offense going against St. Charles East
It’s not easy for the Montini girls basketball players to impress coach Jason Nichols, but they did it Saturday morning.
The Broncos took an 82-43 victory from St. Charles East at the Schaumburg Thanksgiving Tournament, their third straight victory there.
“I think our improvement over the last two games was very good,” Nichols said. “... We were getting out and running, five kids committed to going as hard as they could.”
Montini (3-0) jumped out to a 10-0 lead before Amanda Hilton ended the run with a pair of free throws. That started a St. Charles East run, and the Saints cut the lead to 10-9 on a Hilton 3-pointer from the top of the key with 2:11 left in the first quarter.
It was a special basket for Hilton, giving her 1,000 points in a Saints uniform. It was appropriate that it came on a 3-pointer from that spot, she said.
“It was an amazing feeling,” said Hilton, who entered the season 49 points shy of 1,000 and hit the mark Saturday with her seventh point of the game. “I knew I was close, but I tried not to think too much about it, just play my game and I knew it would come sooner or later.”
“It couldn’t happen to a better kid,” Drumtra said of the senior guard. “She’s worked really, really hard. She’s the heart and soul. I was really happy for her. I think she’s probably happy that it’s done because it weighs on the mind a little bit.”
An added benefit was that it came against Montini. Hilton plays club basketball for the Montini-based Lady Lightning and knows some of the Broncos players and coaches.
“It was really nice,” said Hilton, who finished the game with a team-best 13 points. “They all were happy for me.”
After Saints junior Kyra Washington was fouled at the first-quarter buzzer, she sank a pair of free throws to tie the game at 14. A Katelyn Claussner basket gave the Saints a brief 16-14 lead to start the second.
“That was good, and that’s what we talked about,” Saints coach Lori Drumtra said. “Games aren’t one quarter, and you can’t rest on that, and I thought we didn’t. We played tough, we came out and did exactly what we wanted to do, which was to really control the ball, not try to run with them. We knew they were going to press, to not let the press beat us because I know they can do that.”
The change in fortunes got the Broncos’ attention, however, and they scored the next 7 points. When Kelly Karlis hit a 3-pointer with 3:04 remaining in the first half, the lead hit double digits again, 29-17. Another Karlis 3, off a pass from freshman guard Nikki Oppenheimer, gave the Broncos a 36-21 lead at halftime.
“We can score and we can score in a lot of different ways,” Nichols said. “We had a lot of success when we were attacking the basket.”
“It’s hard to hang offensively with a team like that, because they have so many weapons,” Drumtra said, “so you have to do it defensively, and we didn’t get the job done. The bottom line, we just didn’t. They had way too many layups, way too many open shots.
“They’re a great team, obviously, but we can’t give up 80-plus points a game. We’ve done that now back to back, we’ve given up 79 and 82. We know what we need to work on for sure.”
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