Buffalo Grove downs Maine West 56-50

Buffalo Grove's girls basketball team came into the Dundee-Crown Charger Classic with a 3-8 record Friday.

Maine West was 8-3.

But the Bison used the old "throw out the records" formula and pulled off a 56-50 triumph in the opening round of the 26th annual 16-team tourney in Carpentersville.

After falling behind 18-6 early in the second quarter, Buffalo Grove stormed back to within 24-21 by half and gained its first lead late in the third quarter.

Sophomore sharpshooter Andrea DiPrima (18 points) hit a 3-pointer to tie the game at 32-32 with 55 seconds left in the period.

A free throw by Ellen Coogan gave West (8-4) its last lead at 33-22. DiPrima hit a 12-foot runner in the lane to give BG a 34-33 lead after three quarters.

DiPrima started the final period with a 3-pointer and 2 free throws for a 49-43 lead.

West junior Sam Acosta, who missed the tourney last year with an injury, hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead in half with 6:12 left.

But KC Dunne (7 points) hit a 3-pointer to extend the lead to 42-36 and West never got closer than 4.

"A lot of the times we've been losing games in the fourth quarter," DiPrima said. "But now we learned to win one in the fourth quarter. We played awesome team defense."

Bison first-year coach Pat Dudle praised the defense, particularly Kaitlin Hillner.

"Kaitlin (8 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists) did a nice job on Sam Acosta, who hurt us early," Dudle said.

Acosta scored 14 of the Warriors' 16 points in the first quarter, including a pair of 3-pointers. She finished with 19 points while Megan O'Neill finished with 10 for the Warriors.

Shaina Yalda (6 points) circle from the front of the key for a layup to pull West to within 52-48 with 21 seconds left.

Heather Nisbet's 2 free throws made it 54-48. A 14-footer by Amanda Ollerer closed the gap to 54-50 but sophomore Nell Boyd (8 points, 3 steals, 2 assists) made 2 free throws with 8.4 seconds left for the final margin.

"I'm not going to lie - it's been frustrating," said Nisbet (11 points, 3 steals) about the 3-8 start. "But we knew we've been playing a tough schedule. We knew we had to win. We were sick of losing."

"This was exciting," DiPrima added. "We needed to get our confidence back. My teammates made great passes."

Stacey Lialios added 4 points and 3 rebounds for the Bison.

Dudle felt defense helped the Bison get back into the game in the second quarter.

"We wanted to put a little more pressure on them, and the defense turned into offensive points for us," he said. "We have a lot of young kids and they're still in learning roles. They have to learn to win.

"Hopefully we're moving toward the direction of learning how to close out games in the fourth quarter. We've had an extremely tough schedule. Hopefully, it pays off at the end."

The schedule has another tough game on it at 5 p.m. Saturday as the Bison meet state-ranked and four-time defending tourney champ Fenwick in the quarterfinals.

"It will be tough," Nisbet said. "We know they lost to Wheeling (82-72) and we played fairly well against Wheeling. If we can come out with the same energy we had this game, maybe we can give them a decent game. We'll see what happens."

Maine West coach Derril Kipp said his club stopped playing after one quarter.

"We did a pretty good executing everything in the first quarter but after that, we didn't run what we were supposed to and they capitalized on our mistakes," said Kipp, who received 3 rebounds and 3 assists from Kelsey Hargesheimer. "We were very inconsistent and turnovers killed us. And we missed layup after layup."