St. Charles East gets past Barrington
St. Charles East junior guard Samantha Munroe wanted her team to pick up its intensity during Saturday night's nonconference girls basketball game against Barrington.
Mission accomplished.
Munroe scored a team-leading 17 points with 4 assists and 4 steals while helping lift the Saints (7-11) to a 45-41 victory over the Fillies (8-10) in St. Charles.
"Coming off the Batavia loss (Friday), I think all of us had a lot of intensity tonight," said Munroe, who scored 5 of the Saints' last 6 points, including a runner in the lane that gave the home team a 43-36 lead with 3:42 remaining.
"I think we were just trying to attack the inside."
Munroe's aggressiveness and ability to take it to the basket often came in handy for the Saints, who ended their 3-game losing streak.
"She's doing that more now which is good because that's going to free up Kelly (Rinker) on the perimeter and Sara (Rosenfeldt) inside hopefully," said Saints coach Lori Drumtra.
Ahead 21-17 with 2 minutes left in the first half, the Saints scored the final 4 points of the second quarter and added 6 more at the outset of the third period to take their biggest lead of the night at 31-17 on a pair of free throws by Munroe.
Meanwhile, Barrington struggled to get anything going offensively throughout the first 3 quarters.
At one point, the Fillies went nearly 12 minutes without scoring a basket and they only had 4 field goals in the opening half.
"I'll take that," Drumtra said of her team's defensive performance.
However, Barrington kept things interesting down the stretch, cutting the deficit to 4 at 37-33 with 4:58 remaining on a 3-pointer by senior guard Kelly Katis (8 points).
Another 3-pointer by Katis made it 39-36 less than a minute later, and the Fillies continued their late run, making it 43-41 on a 3-pointer by 6-2 senior center Megan Talbot with 2:43 left.
Those were the last points Barrington would score, as Rosenfeldt split a pair of free throws with 2 seconds remaining to provide the Saints with their 4-point margin of victory.
"We didn't shoot the ball super well tonight," said Barrington coach Babbi Barreiro. "I thought we played gutsy down the stretch but we didn't execute in the last couple minutes of the game."
Talbot led the Fillies with 20 points, 16 rebounds and 4 blocked shots.
Kelly Rinker and Hannah Vitkus added 10 and 8 points, respectively, for the Saints.
"We needed a win and we got it," said Munroe.
"We needed a win very badly," said Drumtra. "It's good because we've got a rough week ahead of us with Larkin on Tuesday, Bartlett on Thursday and Geneva after that so we needed a game like this to get over the hump."