Carmel’s huge comeback falls short against Highland Park

A couple of Glenbrook North basketball players, sitting among teammates in Mundelein’s bleachers before their tipoff against Prairie Ridge, cheered for Lena Munzer as Highland Park’s highlight machine performed twisting layups and slapped rebounds into her soft hands against Carmel Catholic.

In Munzer’s last game — against Grayslake North two nights earlier — the junior scored a school-record 45 points.

What fans at Mundelein saw Saturday night was almost another once-in-a-forever occurrence.

By Carmel.

The Corsairs trimmed a 26-point third-quarter deficit to one, but fell 49-47, as Highland Park advanced to Wednesday’s 7:30 p.m. championship game of the Lady Mustangs Turkey Shootout.

It was the first loss for Carmel (3-1).

“Great job to Carmel,” said coach Jolie Bechtel, whose Giants improved to 3-1. “We lost our composure a little bit. They put on the pressure and we dealt with it pretty well at first, and then we panicked.”

Munzer finished with 23 points, 12 rebounds and 6 steals, while teammate Arial Swartz added 16 points.

Munzer picked up her fourth foul early in the fourth with the Giants up 42-24. Bechtel left her star in the game, but Munzer didn’t play as aggressively on either end of the court. She had 0 shot attempts in the fourth.

“She’s a really good player,” Carmel coach Kelly Perz said. “She’s smart on defense.”

Jackie Berardi sank a short jumper with 3:18 left in the third quarter to extend Highland Park’s lead to 40-14. But Carmel’s Jackie Meier (team-high 13 points) hit the first of her three 3-pointers, and little did anyone know that the shot would start an amazing comeback.

“At that point, we really didn’t have anything to lose,” Perz said. “I told the girls, ‘Keep your head in the game, stay in it mentally, chip away as much as we can, and see if we can get it respectable.’ ”

By the end of the third, a 3-pointer by Cassidy Kloss (10 points, 6 rebounds) had brought Carmel within 42-22.

The Corsairs kept coming, kept hitting shots, kept pressuring Highland Park into mistakes.

Meier’s fall-away 3 with 1:21 to go cut Carmel’s deficit to 48-45. The senior guard then stripped Munzer and scored on a layup to make it 48-47 with 1:07 left.

With 15 seconds left, Highland Park’s Morgan Bartelstein was fouled and bumped her head on the court. Dazed, she remained in the game and missed the first free throw. But she hit the second to make it a two-point game.

“I asked the official to check with her,” Bechtel said. “She said she was fine.”

When Carmel missed a short shot at the buzzer, Highland Park had escaped.

Carmel’s “buzz” trap, which resembles a 2-3 zone, Perz said, helped force Highland Park into 7 turnovers in the fourth.

Carmel hit 9 of 12 shots — including two 3-pointers by Meier and one by Kloss — in the final quarter. Sarah McHugh (8 points, 6 boards) was 3 of 3 from the field.

Carmel outscored Highland Park 25-7 in the fourth.

“Our defensive intensity in the second half of the third quarter and then our ability to take care of the ball in the fourth quarter really helped us,” Perz said. “We’ve been struggling with taking care of the ball, and that’s why we were down by so much (29-10) at half.”