Lake Park holds off St. Charles East

No matter what St. Charles East did, the Saints just could not get over the hump against Lake Park and get closer than 7 points in the final five minutes of Friday's game in Roselle.

One of the major reasons for that was the Lancers shot 7 of 9 in the final period and held on for a 56-48 win.

"It was a hard-fought game," St. Charles East coach Lori Drumtra said. "It seemed like every time we were able to get a steal, they were able to get one right back or get a loose ball. They also shot the ball extremely well and that made it even more tough for us."

The Lancers (14-11, 5-3) also used a balanced scoring attack as they had three players reach double digits as Chelsea Gieseke had a team-high 15 points. Carly Willert chipped in with 13 points, and Tori Clark scored 11 points and had 6 rebounds. But more impressively, Lake Park shot 55 percent from the floor, 65 percent in the second half.

"We preach to have balanced scoring as a team," Lake Park coach Chris Fruehling said. "When we knock down shots, we are tough to beat. One thing we have been stressing in practice is shooting and how we need to shoot a higher percentage. Tonight was a good shooting night for us. St. Charles East is a good team and I am very proud of my girls and how they played."

The game was a back-and-forth affair with neither team building a lead exceeding 9 points until Clark went coast-to-coast, breaking the press, and getting a hoop and the harm and made the free throw to give the Lancers a 38-28 lead with 6:45 remaining.

"We worked on the press break in practice and it didn't really give us any trouble," Clark said. "On that particular play all I was thinking was to break the press, get the bucket and give us our biggest lead and hopefully hang on from there. We did and it was a good win for us."

The Saints (14-11, 7-2) were led in scoring by Lexi Baltes, who had 18 points, hitting three 3-pointers, and Kara Schnier added 10 points, 8 in the fourth quarter. Fruehling had a game plan on how to slow down the Saints, but it almost didn't work.

"We were focusing on stopping their inside game from the beginning," he said. "They took advantage of that and were able to knock down some perimeter shots early on. But we were able to adjust and do some things and get a win against a good team."