The statistics add up for O'Riordan, Barrington in win over Buffalo Grove

With Friday's girls basketball game pretty much in hand, Barrington senior Molly O'Riordan sat on the bench in the fourth quarter with pencil and clipboard in hand.

After her nifty performance on the court, she sure deserved a hand at that point.

"I was keeping everyone's rebounds, steals, assists and blocked shots," the Dayton recruit said. "And it's fun."

For the first three quarters, it was the Fillies' fans having fun watching O'Riordan rack up the stats on that clipboard.

The versatile 6-foot-2 four-year starter, who has played in the Class 4A finals in two sports (basketball in 2021 and volleyball this fall), scored 17 points with a more than a dozen combined rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots as the Fillies won their penultimate game of the Bison Classic at Buffalo Grove High School on Saturday.

Trailing 3-2 with less than three minutes to play in the first quarter, the Fillies (2-2) went on an 11-0 run in the final 2:51 and never looked back in a 51-16 triumph over the host Bison (0-5).

"We started out a little rough, but we definitely want to capitalize on our press and working on finishing off turnovers," O'Riordan said. "We needed this win after tough back-to-back losses to Maine South and Hersey. We weren't so happy with our performance on Monday (61-30 loss to Hersey) so this is a great win to have under our belt.

"Now we want to come out strong (Saturday) against Grayslake Central (3-2), which is a strong team. Today's game was really important for us to realize we have to play as a team and we did a great job with that as everyone contributed so it was great."

Among those contributors were sophomore Simra Alam (6 points), freshman Eve Adler (5), junior Ashley Mahlum (4), freshman Lily Richmond (4) and junior Vidi Trivedi (4).

Mahlum's layup off an assist from Adler ignited the Fillies' 11-0 run, which ended on Alam's rebound layup with 28.6 seconds to halftime. In between was a beautiful crosscourt pass from O'Riordan to Adler, who connected on a 3-pointer for a 9-3 lead.

"Molly has really nice court vision," said Barrington coach Babbi Barreiro. "She's an excellent passer."

O'Riordan's second 3-pointer gave Barrington a 23-5 lead in the second quarter. A steal and layup by Trivedi and a 3-pointer from sophomore Maddie Anderle extended the advantage to 28-5 with 1:53 left in the first half."

"We didn't shoot real well to start the game,:'' Barreiro added. "I thought the kids played hard defensively. We just tried to create some situations for some turnovers. We had success at that so I was happy with that."

"I thought Vidi Trivedi was really aggressive defensively and Simra Alam had her hands on the basketball a lot, got some nice rebounds and did a lot of good things for us as well."

Senior Hannah Glanz hit a 3-pointer in the third quarter for Buffalo Grove and made 2 of 3 free throws for 5 points.

"Hannah is a four-year starter and she is doing a lot for us," said Buffalo Grove coach Martha Kelly, also the school's softball and girls cross country coach. "She is doing a good job stepping up as leader, talking to the girls and helping everyone out. Plus, she is doing it on both ends of the floor as one of our best defenders and taking care of the ball on offense.

"We're young with seven of our 10 girls being underclassmen. Our seniors are doing a great job of helping leading them, but we're young and I just have to remember that for the future."