Glenbard North holds on to overcome Metea Valley

The Glenbard North girls basketball team, like most basketball teams, has put in a lot of practice time getting ready for the season going into Tuesday night's game at Metea Valley in Aurora.

A win still eluded them.

However, Tuesday night belonged to the Panthers (1-4). They held off two Mustangs fourth-quarter rallies to prevail 35-30.

"This feels great. We worked as a team," said Brea King, who scored 9 points.

Glenbard North led 21-16 at the end of the third quarter. A free throw by King made it 22-16 just into the final period.

Then Metea (2-3) answered with a 7-0 scoring run to take a 23-22 run before Panthers coach Steve Wit called a timeout with 6:29 left in the game.

That scoring spurt was composed of a three-point play by Chloe Kurkjian, Rachael Kern converting a turnover into a basket and a putback by Japera Walker. Walker led the Mustangs with 9 points.

The Panthers then responded with a 6-0 run to go back up 28-23 at the 4:52 mark. All 6 points came from Chassidi Betney, including two putbacks. She led all scorers with 10 points.

Again, Metea responded with a scoring run, this time a 7-0 advantage to go up 30-28 with 3:20 left in the contest. Free throws by Kurkjian and Nyla Hart and a three-point play by Walker were the key moments.

Metea coach Cedric Williams liked how the Mustangs responded in the fourth quarter.

"We came out with energy on defense. But there are things that we need to work on on defense," he said.

Betney said the key to the Panthers surviving the wild fourth quarter and come away with the win was to keep calm.

"We just needed to not rush anything," she said.

Betney also finished with 12 rebounds. She scored four of Glenbard North's final five throws in the final 2:04 to keep a grip on the game.

Wit said he was glad that the Panthers learned a valuable lesson on Tuesday.

"I'm most proud of their ability to recover from giving up the lead and being able to settle down and go get it back. We had a game similar to this last week in our Thanksgiving tournament and we lost the game in OT. We weren't poised," he said.

Glenbard North led 6-3 after the first quarter and 17-11 at halftime.