Girls basketball: Silva scores 42, but Leyden slips past Maine East

So what happens when you get a Saturday nonconference girls basketball game featuring two players, Maine East junior Bella Silva and Leyden senior Katherine Macleod, who have scored more than 1,000 varsity points?

Pure entertainment down to the wire.

Despite a school-record 42 points from Silva, Leyden overcame it with a team-high 22 points from freshman Jaylani Hernandez and 17 from Macleod for a 63-59 win in Northlake.

“I'll tell you what, just as a fan of basketball, that was fun to watch,” said Leyden fifth-year coach Tony Smith. “We had a great seat right there in the front row and to be able to watch.”

Smith watched his 11-7 team rally from a 10-point first-half deficit and finally take the lead for good on a driving layup by senior Era Mustafa with 1:55 left in the game to make it 55-54.

It came just after Silva's three-point play had given Maine East (7-9) a 54-53 lead with 2:43 left.

Hernandez scored on a rebound layup on the baseline and a 12-footer from the baseline to extend the Eagles lead to 59-54.

A 3-pointer by Blue Demons junior Heidi Cortez (10 points) made it 59-57 with 41.5 seconds left.

Natalia Sokolska (10 points) answered with a fastbreak layup for a 61-57 lead before Maine East got back to within 2 points on a steal and layup by Silva with 15 seconds left.

Maine East forced another turnover and had a chance to tie the game, but Mustafa came up with a steal and layup just before the buzzer sounded to provide the 63-59 margin.

“This was a nice way to start the new year,” said Macleod, who will play for Missouri Baptist University next season.

Macleod recently became only the third player in program history to reach 1,000 points.

Then on Saturday, two games later, she found herself going up against another 1,000-point scorer in Silva.

“I've faced her in the past and she's a really good player,” said Macleod, who now has 1,038 points. “It's fun competing against her, and just guarding her is really difficult. So I feel like when I guard her, my defense gets better through her really good ballhandling.”

Macleod and Fernandez each had two 3-pointers in the third quarter when Leyden rallied from a 27-19 halftime deficit to trail 43-42 heading into the final period.

“We kind of just talked about how we need to pick up the energy and intensity and then we just need to run,” Macleod said about the second half. “We just kept running the floor and we picked up the intensity. The bench had amazing energy and I think the energy translated onto the court and then we just had a spurt of scoring and then we just never let up.”

Fenrnadez came off the bench for her big game, which included a nifty backhanded layup under the basket which gave her team a 53-51 lead in the final period.

Even Smith was impressed.

“She drove baseline,” he said. “I thought she was going to go up on the one side and then she ends up on the other side, flips it up, and it just happened to go in. It was a beauty.

“We started her a couple of times and then she was kind of dealing with some calf and ankle injuries, so she's kind of working her way back and we've had her coming off the bench. And she does a phenomenal job off the bench for us. This was one of her better games. So we're excited about her as well moving forward and what we'll have with her the next three years.”

Leyden outscored Maine East 26-16 in the third quarter.

“The third quarter hurt us,” said Maine East coach Lance Newman. “We gave up a lot of open 3-pointers. We never applied the pressure that we needed to, and we weren't boxing out and committing to rebounding. We gave up a lot of loose balls and rebounds.

“(Fernandez) scored a lot. We didn't have anybody who wanted to take on that challenge and stop her from scoring. She got a lot of open looks. We were focused too much on (Macleod) and (Fernandez) ended up hurting us. ”

Silva was putting the hurt on Leyden the whole game, scoring in double digits in three quarters.

“She is our instant offense,” Newman said of Silva, who has scored more than 1,500 points in less than three seasons. “We had some help from Heidi (Cortez), but we still need more effort. We just need to keep attacking and knowing scenarios late. We didn't get the ball into our playmaker's hands with 10 seconds left and it turned into a turnover.”