Sweet victory for Kloss, Carmel
It was the ultimate birthday party.
Carmel sophomore guard Cassidy Kloss was surrounded by old friends and new friends as she celebrated her Sweet 16 on Monday night.
The icing on her cake was that she and her teammates also celebrated a 46-41 victory over Lakes. Interestingly, Lakes is a team that features a few of Kloss's old AAU teammates as well as her former AAU coach.
Lakes coach Peter Schneider used to coach the AAU team that Kloss played on in sixth and seventh grade. Kloss, who lit up her old coach's current team for a game-high 16 points, said she grew up playing for Schneider because he is one of her dad's friends.
"Happy Birthday, kid," Schneider said as he approached Kloss after the game. "It (Kloss's talent) is all because of her old AAU coach."
Kloss and Schneider shared a chuckle, but neither was laughing a few minutes earlier.
The closing moments of the game were intense as both teams scrapped hard. Lakes overcame an 8-point deficit with three minutes to play and pulled to within a point (42-41) with 52.9 seconds remaining.
Schneider called three timeouts over the final minute as his team had several chances to take the lead. His last timeout came with 18.2 seconds remaining and the resulting play produced the Eagles' best shot at a go-ahead basket.
Junior forward Terese McMahon had her defender sealed on the block and was calling for a lob pass that would have led her directly under the basket for an uncontested layup. But the pass was thrown a bit short and a steal sealed the win for Carmel, which then closed out with free throws by Sarah McHugh and a layup by Kathleen Felicelli, who finished with 10 points.
The Corsairs improve to 5-2 while Lakes drops to 2-5.
"I thought I could (get to the basket), but (Carmel) just covered it really well. They were able to (tip the pass away)," said McMahon, who scored 14 points and was the only Lakes player to finish in double-figures. "The good thing is that we never hung our heads. We never gave up. We kept fighting and we got back in the game. I love games like this when they come down to the very end."
After the third quarter, it appeared that a close game actually wasn't in the cards.
Carmel erased a 3-point halftime deficit (21-18) by outscoring Lakes 16-6 in the third quarter. That gave the Corsairs a comfy 34-27 lead heading in the fourth quarter.
"We had a nice talking to at halftime," Kloss said with a smile. "We just didn't do a lot of little things in the first half like boxing out, transition defense, help defense. We played more together in the second half. We had each other's backs on a lot of things and it helped."
Dialing up the defensive pressure also helped. Carmel forced Lakes into 6 turnovers in the third quarter alone. The Eagles had 10 turnovers in the second half and 21 on the game.
"We came out really well in the second half," Carmel coach Kelly Perz said. "We switched up our press a little bit and that seemed to work. We got layups off of it and that's kind of how we built up our lead. We managed to hang on somehow."
Camel also got 6 points apiece out of McHugh and Kaitlyn Lynch. Meanwhile, Amanda Smith and Ashlee Cunningham added 9 and 8 points respectively for Lakes, which made the fourth-quarter a nailbiter by going on a 6-0 run midway through. Cunningham is the only senior on the Lakes roster.
"Ashlee is doing a great job of leading," Schneider said. "We're very young, but we've got a lot of kids who can play."
Grayslake Central 37, Richmond-Burton 27: Senior guard Claire Brennan scored 12 points to lead the Rams to victory. Teammate Skyler Jessop added 9 points.
Vernon Hills 68, Antioch 30: Meri Bennett-Swanson scored 13 points and grabbed 5 rebounds to lead Vernon Hills, which also got 9 points apiece out of Sydney Smith and Alina Lehocky. Smith added 5 assists and Lehocky had 7 rebounds.