Maine West battles past New Trier
Maine West and New Trier are no strangers in girls basketball since both are considered among the best in the Central Suburban League and in the state.
In fact, the Warriors have ended the Trevians' run in the postseason the last couple of seasons.
But getting a chance to play against one another at the end of November doesn't seem the right time of the season. The schedule in the CSL had crossovers set up early this time around.
The matchup was just like seeing these two teams battling in the postseason, as Maine West held off host New Trier 50-42 in Winnetka on Tuesday night.
"I'm happy to get out of here with a win. Anytime you come here you expect it's going to be a battle," Maine West coach Kim de Marigny said. "I very much would've liked to have this later on, but CSL crossovers are early this year. It was an important game for seeding purposes in the future.
"Teri (New Trier coach Rodgers) has her girls ready to play no matter what. I probably didn't have my girls quite ready to play, as I should have. But, I'll take my share of the blame."
There's not much wrong seeing the Warriors improve to 7-0 on the young season. Maine West was led by Rachel Kent with a game-high 13 points. Dylan VanFleet added 11 points, and Angela Dugalic had a double-double with 10 points and 11 rebounds.
New Trier's Rebecca Goldman led the way with a team-high 10 points and Taite Ryan chipped in with 9.
"It's early in the year and Maine West is one of the best teams in the area," said Rodgers, who recently hit 500 wins in her career and saw her team drop its record to 5-2. "I thought we hurt ourselves quite a bit out there. If we took care of the ball better, then maybe we could've had a different result. Still, I thought our defense was great. But we had troubles scoring. Maybe our spacing wasn't good and not getting on transition. We weren't creating good shots for ourselves."
The game opened with a pretty good pace. Maine West had an 18-16 lead after the first 8 minutes.
In the second quarter, the Warriors took over with their defense and getting a few points off transition, opening a 25-19 lead by the break.
The Warriors came out strong in the second half with a 12-5 run that was capped off by a Lena Albo layup with one minute remaining for a 37-24 lead.
However, the Trevians' Olivia Becker (8 points) dropped down a trey with five seconds left and the Warriors held a 37-27 advantage after the third.
Becker opened the fourth quarter with another 3-pointer which cut the lead to 37-30. But Maine West had the answer with a pair of free throws by Dugalic and Kent making a layup, pushing the back out to double-digits.
New Trier tried to rally back with full court pressure in the final few minutes after it cut the lead to 43-36 with 2:32 left. But VanFleet scored twice on successive layups and pushed the margin back out to 11 at 47-36 with 1:25 remaining.
"We talked about how high pressure New Trier can be," VanFleet said. "I knew if I could get one step in front, I could bat one of them. Earlier, I had some trouble driving, so the fourth quarter I thought I got this and it worked well. I thought it was big as a kick-starter and a confidence booster. We were able to get that many points ahead. We knew that we got this and we could hold them."
Maine West ended up with the 8-point difference over the final minute.
"The lead is never enough," de Marigny said. "I'll take the win and the bus back to Des Plaines."