Girls basketball LePage, Crystal Lake South drive past Cary-Grove for key FVC win
Three Crystal Lake South players – Makena Cleary, Laken LePage and Gaby Dzik – sent their first 3-point shots through the net Friday night in a key Fox Valley Conference game against Cary-Grove.
The hot-shot Gators finished the first quarter 5 of 7 from beyond the arc, but made only two 3s the rest of the way. LePage, a 5-foot-8 senior, was among the hottest shooters for South, and even her long-range attempts started to fade as C-G mounted a comeback.
LePage, thus, took matters into her own hands – just in a different way.
The Saint Xavier University commit ditched the 3 and started to attack C-G’s interior defense. All throughout the fourth quarter, a determined LePage made hard drives to the basket, and every time successfully turned them into points.
LePage tossed in nine of her game-leading 23 points in the fourth quarter, and South escaped with a 53-42 win over C-G to stay one game back of FVC leader Huntley in the conference standings.
“My coaches, everyone really, was saying take it to the rim as much as you can,” said LePage, who drilled 6 of 9 free throws in the win, including all five of her attempts in the fourth. “If your shot’s not falling you have to find a different way. It’s something I’m always working on.”
South coach Mark Mucha said LePage (two assists, four steals), who recently surpassed 1,000 career points, is someone that the Gators can always count on.
“She can just do so many things with the basketball, and it’s hard to defend that,” Mucha said. “She’s such a strong kid and works so hard at it. It’s just hard to stop.”
South (16-4, 8-2 FVC), winners of seven in a row, took a 29-19 lead into the half, thanks to an 8-3 run to close out the second quarter. But C-G (14-6, 7-3), which entered Friday tied with South and Burlington Central for second in conference, got right back in the game with a hot start of its own in the third.
The majority of that came from senior guard Aria Stanton, who scored 10 of her team-high 16 points in the third quarter. Stanton started the third with a 3 and finished with a game-high four from beyond the arc.
The Trojans scored the first 14 points of the third and took a 40-38 lead into the fourth.
“I think we do really well responding when things aren’t going our way,” said Stanton, who hit five of her final six shots. “We knew that wasn’t us playing when we came out flat. We knew it was time to respond ... bring it together.”
Cary-Grove first-year coach Bryan Stortz said Stanton’s re-emergence has provided a big boost.
“She’s starting to feel it now,” Stortz said of Stanton, who played only three minutes against South in the teams’ first meeting in December. “Beginning of the year, she was playing with an ankle (injury) that took her a little bit longer to get back. She wasn’t herself when she came back, lost her touch a little bit.
“It just took her some games to get her feet back under her – and she’s really starting to grow and do better things."
Junior Gracey LePage, a Michigan State soccer commit, was second in scoring on the Gators behind her sister with 14 points. The 5-9 guard helped spark a strong finish to the first half while she also ended the night with three steals and two assists.
“Her athleticism, energy, intensity and competitiveness is unmatched most of the time she’s out there,” Mucha said. “She’s a game-changer for us. Whether she’s making baskets or not, she really changes the whole energy of our team.”
“We just need to keep the same energy we had today,” Gracey LePage said. “If we can have the most energy in every quarter, we can beat any team I believe.”
Dzik finished with seven points and seven rebounds for South, Cleary had six points and two blocks, and Tessa Melhuish tallied a team-high nine rebounds.
For C-G, Malaina Kurth had 11 points and two 3s, Kennedy Manning had seven points, five rebounds, four assists and a pair of steals, and Olivia Leuze added five points and 10 rebounds.
Stortz came away encouraged by the way his team responded to a hot start by the Gators. The Trojans, however, weren’t able to finish that strong, outscored 15-2 in the final quarter.
“South came out on fire, they punched us in the face,” Stortz said. “We kind of staggered in the first quarter and I asked them, ‘Well, are you guys still standing?’ They all nod their head yes. ... One of my assistants said there were 12 or 13 possessions in a row in the first half where (South) didn’t score, so I thought our girls did a great job. They showed what type of resolve they have.”