Crump, Zion-Benton fill it up at Lake Zurich
Game time started at dinner time, 6 p.m., for Friday’s girls basketball game between host Lake Zurich and Zion-Benton.
A scheduled holiday concert choir at the school forced the early tipoff.
“Have I eaten dinner yet?” Z-B assistant coach Frank Mattucci said afterward. “No.”
Zee-Bees senior forward Octavia “Sue” Crump was hungry, too.
“Wings,” the 6-footer said. “I’ll probably have wings tonight. And they’ll be hot.
“I like hot food.”
Crump and Zion pretty much stopped LZ, cold, in the fourth quarter of its 43-40 victory. The Bears (8-2, 3-1 in the North Suburban Conference Lake division) shot 1-for-9 from the field and scored 4 points in the final frame, after entering the quarter with a 36-32 lead.
“Kind of an ugly, little battle,” Zion-Benton coach Tanya Johnson said after her club improved to 7-2, 3-1. “It was a defensive war out there, and a great win for us.
“A huge win,” she added. “This division in our conference is tough, so tough … So many tough teams in it.”
Crump might be the toughest player in it, the most active, the most likely to average doubles figures in … floor burns.
Crump, who verbally committed to play hoops at Illinois State on Thursday, scored 15 points, grabbed 7 rebounds and amassed a game-high 6 steals.
She netted 7 of her team’s 9 points in the third quarter.
“She was everywhere, wasn’t she?” Johnson said, smiling. “Hustling, going hard on offense, on defense.”
Added LZ coach Chris Bennett, also impressed: “Crump had an attitude tonight, an ‘I can dominate the glass; try to stop me’ attitude.”
Z-B sophomore Samantha Rodriguez, a 5-9 forward, also packed the stats sheet, finishing with 15 points, 11 boards and 3 steals.
She hit for 8 of the visitors’ 11 points in the final eight minutes.
“Zion exposed a few of our weaknesses tonight,” admitted Bennett, two days after his Bears beat reigning NSC Lake champ Libertyville 47-39.
“The good news?” he added. “Our schedule kind of favors us; our next game isn’t until (Dec. 17, against Stevenson). We have a good week to figure things out.”
Four Bears tallied at least 6 points Friday night, with reserve Stephanie Schmid pouring in a team-high 14. It took her only a handful of seconds to find twine, after entering the game at 4:02 of the first quarter.
The 5-10 senior guard later scored her team’s final 4 points in the quarter, including a driving, buzzer-beating layup. On the latter bucket she sped from a wing, downshifted while dribbling, and then somehow seeped her frame between a pair of defenders.
Schmid banked the ball in gently, as the clock raced toward 0:00.
LZ trailed 14-10 after one quarter.
“Stephanie can be automatic on offense,” Bennett said. “She has the ability to hit a big shot, get us some momentum.”
Bears senior starting guard Dori Darras (12 points, 5 rebounds) was Dori the Explosive One in the third quarter, striking for 9 of LZ’s 14 points; classmate Katherine Anderson (8 points) scored the other 5.
A Schmid free throw, at 7:44 of the fourth quarter, gave the hosts a 37-32 advantage.
But Z-B, last year’s Class 4A state runner-up, produced a 9-2 run and limited LZ to 3 points in the final 3:20.
Z-B senior center/forward Aaliyah Smith contributed 8 points and 7 rebounds.
“Our big focus, tonight, was trust,” said Mattucci, who guided Stevenson to Class AA state titles in 1995-96. “We told our girls, ‘Trust each other on defense.’ I like our quickness, how we’re learning to play together.
“We came up with some big defensive stands, especially in that fourth quarter. Got some big rebounds, too.”