Fortune smiles on Stevenson against Lake Zurich

They've been rolling. Back-to-back wins for only the fourth time this season, anyway.

And with Lake Zurich's basketball girls sitting on 11 wins, coach Chris Bennett was feeling lucky. Or at least confident.

"I thought it was 70-30 (percent) that we were going to win tonight," he said. "I thought we had great matchups for (Stevenson). I think we knew everything they were going to do. The tough thing was, they knew everything we were going to do."

Lake Zurich held host Stevenson without a field goal for nearly 13 minutes in their Class 4A regional semifinal Tuesday night.

Unlucky for Stevenson?

It appeared so. In the end, however, the fourth-seeded Patriots had the hot hand. They reeled off 13 unanswered points and then held on for a 42-39 win over the 14th-seeded Bears to advance to Thursday's 7:30 p.m. regional final on their home court against No. 5 Prospect.

Stevenson improved to 21-7, while Lake Zurich finished 11-20.

"Lake Zurich is much, much better than their record indicates," Patriots coach Tom Dineen said. "I've been trying to tell people that they're somebody that I didn't want to be playing."

"They're definitely a team that's dangerous to play in the playoffs," Stevenson junior Michelle O'Brien said.

O'Brien scored 12 of her game-high 22 points in an opening quarter that saw Stevenson burst to a 12-1 lead. She put back her own miss just before the buzzer to put the Patriots up 20-9 heading into the second quarter.

But Lake Zurich responded by outscoring Stevenson 15-8 in the second quarter and 8-1 in the third. After O'Brien scored with 2:31 left in the first half, Stevenson didn't hit another shot until Anna Morrissey (9 points) drove and scored with 5:35 to go in the fourth.

"We came out with a lot of intensity and that's what got us going," O'Brien said. "I think in the third quarter we got a little bit lazy on defense. We weren't rebounding as much and we weren't being as aggressive on offense."

Audrey Bauer's second field goal of the fourth quarter put Lake Zurich up 36-29 with 6:16 to go and capped a 31-11 run that started late in the opening quarter.

Stevenson shot 2 of 9 in the second quarter and 0 of 9 in the third, committing a combined 12 turnovers in the middle quarters.

"We needed to get one to drop and then we'd get moving," Dineen said. "Then we did get on a pretty good little run (in the fourth)."

Freshman guard Kari Moffat scored on a pair of drives during Stevenson's 13-0 run in the fourth, while O'Brien hit 4-of-5 foul shots. Morrissey's free throw put the Patriots ahead 42-36 with 1:07 left.

Bauer led Lake Zurich with 14 points, a night after scoring a career-high 38 points against Deerfield. Gabby Chapa also played well for the Bears with 11 points and 4 assists. Amanda Orchard grabbed 12 rebounds.

"As we said in the pre-game, it was going to be a game of runs," Bennett said. "Their kids made plays at the end of the game."

It was Stevenson's third win over Lake Zurich this season.

"It wasn't textbook," said Dineen, whose Patriots beat the Bears by three points in the teams' previous meeting. "You're not going to find this in any videos on how to play the game. But we survived and we get the opportunity to play Thursday."