Barrington squeaks by Maine South in opener
After placing second in Class 4A last season, the Barrington girls basketball team faced a tough test in their 2022-23 season opener Saturday morning against Maine South.
The contest at the Buffalo Grove Thanksgiving Classic went down to the wire, but in the end the No. 3-ranked Fillies were able to hold off the No. 20 Hawks 67-63.
A free throw by Barrington senior Sophie Swanson (26 points, 4 steals) gave the Fillies a 65-60 lead with 12 seconds to play. But Maine South's Ally Pape hit a 3-pointer with 4.1 seconds remaining to cut the gap to 65-63.
That would be the last stand for the Hawks (1-1) though as Barrington junior Molly O'Riordan (career-high 31 points, 6 rebounds) calmly hit two free throws with 2.5 seconds to go to seal the narrow victory.
"Barrington has three key returners from their run last year and we knew that so I'm proud of the way the kids fought, but we came here to win a game," said Maine South coach Jeff Hamann. "Unfortunately we did not have an answer for O'Riordan inside, but we're going to learn from it, and we're going to hold our heads high."
Swanson scored 10 points in the first quarter before the teams went into halftime tied at 22-22. Barrington held a 39-36 lead after three quarters before Gwen Adler (6 points, 13 rebounds) scored on her own rebound to tie the Fillies' biggest lead at 54-47 with 3:54 left.
Maine South kept chipping away at the lead as a driving basket by Julia Beck made the score 61-58 with a minute to play.
"This gives us a good gauge of what we have to work on. I felt like defensively we were a little slow and we gave a great Maine South team too many open looks," said Barrington coach Babbi Barreiro.
"That team is going to win a lot of games, I'll tell you that. Obviously Sophie and Molly putting the ball in the basket is huge. I thought Gwen (Adler) had a huge presence underneath, and I thought we got nice minutes from the kids that are new."
The Hawks had a balanced scoring attack as Pape had a team-high 15 points and 9 rebounds. Ava Blagojevich (7 assists, 6 rebounds) and Meegan Fahy had 13 points each for Maine South while teammate Asia Kobylarczyk (6 rebounds) also hit double figures with 10 points.
"I think we definitely could have started off a little stronger, but we were able to get the ball inside and it was a great win to start off the season," said O'Riordan. "Obviously we want to get back to state, but we have to focus on the little things first and the big things will come."