Girls basketball: Grayslake Central stifles Wauconda to take outright NLCC lead
It was a first-place showdown when host Grayslake Central faced Wauconda in a battle between two 5-0 Northern Lake County Conference girls basketball teams Friday night.
Taking an early 10-7 lead did not turn out to be a good sign for the visiting Bulldogs as they were plagued by turnovers and cold shooting as the Rams posted a 33-17 NLCC victory.
Wauconda (12-2, 5-1) trailed 11-10 after the first quarter before being blanked 7-0 in the second quarter as Grayslake Central (14-4, 6-0) took an 18-10 lead into halftime.
The Rams went on a 13-point run to take a 20-10 lead early in the third quarter on an inside basket by UW-Green Bay-bound Madison Hoffmann (game-high 11 points, 5 steals, 4 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 assists).
The Bulldogs cut the lead to 20-12 on a bank shot by junior Sarah Palmer (team-high 7 points). But Grayslake Central went on a 5-1 run the rest of the quarter to take its biggest lead at 25-13 entering the fourth quarter.
"We came out kind of slow defensively. We had to clean it up a little bit, and they were scoreless in the second quarter which is amazing for us," said Hoffmann, whose team shot 33% from the field to only 17% for Wauconda. "We definitely have goals for the postseason for the long run, but right now we're just taking it game by game and day by day."
Two baskets by sophomore Peyton Hoffmann (10 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists) capped a 22-3 run by the Rams to make the score 29-13 with 6:30 to play. Wauconda shot 2-for-27 from the floor in the final three quarters to go along with 12 turnovers in both halves.
"We picked a bad night to shoot poorly and not run our offense, and you can't do that against a team like that," said Wauconda coach Jaime Dennis. "We are averaging over 50 points, but they didn't run our offense. We tried three different offenses and they couldn't execute any of them tonight."
Senior Annie Wolff had 9 points and 6 rebounds while teammate Katelyn Marcelain had 8 rebounds, 4 steals, 2 blocks and 2 points. Senior Emma Wisniewski had 6 points for the Bulldogs.
"I thought we played really great defense tonight. They're a talented team, but we took them out of their offense and they didn't get a lot of uncontested shots," said Central coach Steve Ikenn, whose team reached the Class 3A Elite Eight last year. "They made us work hard for our points, but we generated offense with our defense and we were able to get some steals and some runouts that kind of stretched the lead late."