Girls basketball: Waubonsie Valley celebrates special group of seniors with win over Neuqua Valley
Another big win and more records fell, but the Waubonsie Valley seniors are not ready to stop anytime soon.
This year’s senior class has won a ton of games and achieved quite a bit prior to Tuesday night’s senior night against rival Neuqua Valley. The talented veterans helped knocked off the rival Wildcats 64-54 and Danyella Mporokoso and Arianna Garcia-Evans each notched their names in the school’s record books in the process.
Mporokoso scored a game-high 28 points and became the school’s all-time single-season scorer after surpassing the 781 scored by all-stater Ashley Luke a couple decades ago. She needed 20 to catch Luke and is now at 789 for the season.
Garcia-Evans, meanwhile passed up Luke for the school’s all-time career assists total, picking up the six she needed on Tuesday to etch her name into the record book.
“It is really cool and I couldn’t do it without my teammates getting me the ball and setting screens,” said Mporokoso, who tallied 18 points in the first half as the Warriors built a 33-23 lead after a slow start. “Anyone can step up at any time. Sometimes it’s Ari [Garcia-Evans] with the points and today, Taylnn [Heard] was great. We have so many things to look forward to.”
With the win the Warriors improved to 26-1 on the year and 7-1 in the DuPage Valley Conference. Dates with Naperville North Thursday and 7-1 Naperville Central next Tuesday will close out the conference play. The rematch with the Redhawks will decide the title and give Waubonsie Valley a chance to avenge its lone loss this season.
“Senior Night is kinda tricky,” Warriors coach Brett Love said. “They’re emotionally involved, family and friends come out. Some decisions are not the normal decisions that are made. They want to do well and they may force some things.”
Heard wanted to do well and she accomplished that with a career-high 18 points plus 11 rebounds, 8 of which came on the offensive end.
“It was a great night. It feels great. You just have to live it up. You can’t take anything for granted,” said Heard, whose 14 points in the second half helped hold off the Wildcats. “I think we really have a lot of team chemistry. We spend a lot of time together. We practice six days a week and we hang out. I think we’ve built a really good dynamic and we play well together.”
The Warriors had to be on their game as Neuqua Valley (12-15, 5-3) took the court with four straight wins including a big win over Naperville Central last week. Center Michayla Stone dropped in four 3-pointers and led the way with 18 points. Nalia Clifford scored 13 of her 17 during a second-half charge, and Alexis May finished with 13 as three Wildcats scored in double figures.
Despite coming up short, Neuqua Valley coach Mike Williams is not concerned about how his team has been playing of late.
“We are on a streak and right now we are playing our best basketball,” he said. “We’re getting healthy. We beat Naperville Central last week, which was a big win and this one tonight, we were right there. I’ll take us playing that hard and playing that well. We’re fine. I’m not worried where we are. I’m ready for regionals and we’re fine.”