Girls basketball: Healy powers Providence past Hinsdale South

For much of this season, Providence’s girls basketball team has followed a pretty familiar script. Landrie Callahan scores around 20 points, Layken Callahan isn’t too far behind her, and the Celtics win.

Monday night against Hinsdale South, the Celtics showed they don’t always need the first two things to happen to achieve the third thing.

Taylor Healy was red-hot from the start against Hinsdale South and she never cooled down. The junior finished with 19 points on 9-of-11 shooting as the Celtics pulled away from the Hornets to earn a 58-40 victory.

Providence (24-3) still got solid efforts out of both Landrie (19 points) and Layken (eight). The Division I prospects have been safe bets every game to put up special performances since transferring in from Morris this year.

But it was Healy, a two-year starter for the Celtics, who paced the effort Monday. She scored eight of the team’s first 10 points and seemed to make a basket every time the Hornets got a bit closer in the first half.

That was particularly key after Landrie had just five points in the first half and Layken didn’t make her first basket until three minutes into the second quarter. Healy’s rebounding ability and defense also came up huge throughout the evening.

“I just had really great passes from my teammates tonight,” Healy said. “Luckily there were just some shots that were going in for me. It was just good passes that led to good baskets.”

Providence coach Eileen Copenhaver has stressed throughout the season that while having the Callahans are a blessing, and players such as Healy and Kennady Kotowski (eight points) helps, this is a team.

“Eilish Raines had a lot of assists,” Copenhaver said. “Landrie and Layken did their thing. Kennady has been coming alive and scoring with a good floor game. People came off the bench and did a fantastic job filling in their roles.”

While Providence possessed a clear advantage in size and roster numbers, Hinsdale South (15-8) hung tough through the first quarter before the Celtics began to pull away. The Hornets were led by Maeve Savage (17 points), Hailey Goins (12 points) and Sloane Kiefer (eight points).

“We’ve just got to keep our heads up,” Hornets coach Katie Kohr said. “We’ve faced a lot of adversity as of late. We finally have our lineup back, minus one of our seniors who tore her ACL. We just need to continue to play together. … We have some defensive things we need to clean up, but Providence is a good team and I think we played well against them.”