Montini blows out Immaculate Conception

Closed-circuit television was at Immaculate Conception Friday to capture a showdown between one-loss Suburban Christian Blue leaders.

As usual in league, Montini made the reality TV as suspenseful as a "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" rerun.

The night wasn't lacking for theater, though, as Montini coach Jason Nichols was ejected late in the first half of a 63-31 Broncos win. It came after his second technical foul of the second quarter.

"I definitely deserved the first one," Nichols said, "because I was arguing what I felt was a bad call against Michala (Johnson). The second one, I was talking to my kids in the huddle. That's total rabbit ears by the referees, and it's unfortunate. I wasn't swearing. I wasn't complaining a call. Whatever."

Montini led 34-16 at the time. The Broncos didn't blink with their coach out of the gym.

"That was a little crazy," Montini junior Whitney Holloway said, "but we just kept our composure."

Montini staggered IC with a 12-0 start in the teams' first meeting, a 28-point Broncos win in December. They showed an Ali-like knockout punch again. A 9-0 run ended the first quarter with Montini ahead 21-7, Holloway igniting it with a steal and score and Kiki Wilson taking in a transition basket.

It was 32-12 midway through the second after a Mallory Sosnovich 3-pointer.

"We were fired up for this game," Holloway said. "IC's kind of a rivalry now because they have some of the Driscoll girls. Halfway through the season now, we want to come out every game inspired."

IC, which cracked into the Associated Press Class 2A state top 10 this week, struggled against Montini's aggressive matchup zone. The Knights turned the ball over 16 times and missed their first 15 3-point attempts. Many of those turnovers and misses led to Montini run-outs. IC also shot 5 of 13 at the free-throw line.

"We weren't patient enough," said IC's Kasey Reaber, who scored 17 points. "We would just look for the first shot. We weren't running our sets. We didn't play bad, but we didn't play our game."

Johnson scored 21 points and pulled down 8 rebounds, Holloway had 12 points and 5 steals and Whitney Adams had 9 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists for Montini (18-1, 5-0), which has won its five conference games by a 37.4-point average.

"They had a really good crowd," Nichols said, "and we wanted to take them out of the game. We didn't want to give them any indication that they could play with us. Our kids did a good job of that."

Taylor Reaber had 5 points and 9 rebounds for IC (18-2, 3-2).

"To beat a team like that," IC coach Dan Murray said, "we obviously gotta be clicking on all cylinders. Turnovers early hurt us. You can't turn the ball over against them. We had a lot of good looks, but we did not shoot the basketball well. To hang in, you gotta knock down shots.

"We're upset and frustrated. We wanted to put on a little better performance against them. We gotta learn from it, we gotta move forward from it. That's what we did last time we played them."