PEORIA — The Moline girls basketball team is a little bit Jekyll and Hyde right now.
They were more good than bad in the consolation semifinal at the Manual Holiday Tournament, and that allowed the Maroons to down the hosts 36-34. The win was relief after gut-wrenching loss to Peoria High on Tuesday.
The Lions beat Washington and will play East St. Louis for the title, while Moline will play Limestone for the consolation championship today at 2:45.
The Maroons will be keeping their fingers crossed as star guard Kylie Romeo suffered a head injury with four minutes to play and didn't return. She passed all of the concussion tests administered by the on-site athletic trainer.
At the time Romeo went out, the Maroons had a 12-point lead, but it was all Manual after that. With Romeo out, Ram center Chanta Wright finally got open and took advantage. She scored 8 points in the final four minutes to bring Manual back, but the Rams never had the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead in the final frame.
"(When I was guarding her) she was frustrated and just started giving up," Romeo said. "My main goal was to keep her from rebounding."
After pulling down 7 rebounds, Romeo held Wright out of the game as Moline added to its lead.
The Maroons came out of the gate fast, shooting 9-for-11 from the field in the first quarter and mounting a 19-7 lead after one frame.
But then came the bad Maroons. Manual went into a zone late in the first quarter and Moline came to a stand-still. The Maroons went more than 10 minutes without a basket, and what was a 14-point lead was just three when both teams went to their locker rooms.
After scoring just two points in the second, the Maroons turned the tables on Manual.
It was back to good Moline.
The Maroons held Manual to just one basket in the third and only two baskets for the first 12 minutes of the second half before Romeo went out.
"We found out last year when Kylie fouled out once and injured her ankle once, and our girls had to hang on to win," Moline coach Steve Ford said. "She's a key player for us, and the girls appreciate her more when she's not out there."
Just like against Peoria High, Moline struggled when Manual turned up the intensity. In fact, the only basket the Maroons got after Romeo left was a home-run pass from softball star Jordan de Los Reyes to Morgan Gerard from baseline to baseline that caught Manual off-guard.
"I had confidence that Jordan could make a pretty good pass since she's got such a strong arm," Ford said about the gamble with just over a minute left that proved to be the game-winning basket. "That was really the only highlight of the fourth quarter."
Wright led all scorers with 15, while Moline got 7 from Romeo and Sanela Causevic and a half dozen from de Los Reyes and Gerard.
If the Maroons want to win past this tournament, though, they'll have to figure out who they are, Jekyll or Hyde
By Marc Nesseler, nesseler@qconline.com
DIXON — United Township long has been a fixture in the basketball semifinals of the Dixon Girls Holiday Tournament. Geneseo fast is becoming one.
UT's Panthers made it to the semifinals of the Dixon tournament, now in its 34th year, for the 10th time and for the ninth in the past 13 years with a 39-30 victory over Dunlap on Wednesday afternoon.
Geneseo became semifinal-bound for the third time in four years with an easy 47-23 quarterfinal win over Rockford Christian earlier in the day.
Both Geneseo and UT will play twice today. The Leafs, who placed third in '08 and '09, will face Stillman Valley at noon. United Township, which placed second in '08 and '10 and won the title in 2000, faces Forreston at 1:30 p.m. The third-place game will be at 6, followed by the title game at 7:30.
UT coach Justin Shiltz shrugs off the success the Panthers have had at the Dixon tourney.
"This is a good tourney for us," he said. "It's not the kind of competition we normally would see (in the Western Big 6), but the rest of our nonconference schedule is pretty tough. We feel that the Christmas tournament is a time to gain momentum. We want to come out of it playing good basketball."
The quarterfinal showing wasn't necessarily good, but it was a win, UT's 10th in 14 games. A 10-0 run in the second quarter put enough distance between the Panthers and 6-7 Dunlap, with the Eagles only getting as close as seven from there, right before the game's end.
The win, though, could have been costly. With 1:26 left in the game, UT's leading scorer, Abby VanDeventer, went down in a heap away from the ball. She hobbled off the court with an apparent ankle injury. Her status for today is questionable. VanDeventer finished with 16 points, hitting 6-of-7 shots including 4-of-4 3-pointers, by far the game's star.
"Her ankle was tender earlier in the year, so I don't know," Shiltz said. "She was just gaining confidence."
— Leafs win big, but …: "I don't want to rant and rave after a 24-point win, but that's way too many turnovers," said Geneseo coach Scott Hardison. "We're smart in the classroom, but we need to be smart on the basketball court and raise our basketball IQ."
Jumping out to a quick start but then lapsing into a tempo that was too quick according to Hardison, Geneseo handily downed the Royal Lions, who came in with an 8-2 record.
The Leafs (13-2) forced 14 first-quarter turnovers and had six steals in the first three minutes alone. That paved the way to a 27-14 halftime lead that grew as the game progressed. However, by the game's end, the Leafs had more turnovers than the Lions, 29-25.
"That doesn't surprise me," Hardison said of the latter stat. "For some reason we decided to be in a hurry to get done with the game. We've got to learn to play with a lead, and we've got to get better with that as a team."
Turnovers, though, were the lone Leaf downside. Cassi Anderson had nearly as many rebounds as the Lions, with 13 of Geneseo's 39 compared to RC's 17. Kelsey Nystrom and Devan Griffin were both 6-of-6 from the free-throw line en route to 15 and 10 points, respectively. And the Leafs' interior players got RC's 6-foot-5 Emily Nylen into foul trouble early and then held her to two inside shots, four points and two rebounds.
Nystrom, a 5-4 senior guard, came close to a triple double, getting eight steals and six rebounds.
"She's a soccer player who decided to play basketball," Hardison said. "She has become the glue to our team."
By Dan Tomlin, dtomlin@qconline.com
NORMAL — After scoring 17 points and banking home the game-winning bucket, you'd think there might be special treatment.
Not for Alleman's Zoe Kelso.
The senior center hauled the laundry bag of dirty uniforms from the locker room after the Pioneers girls' basketball team knocked off state-ranked No. 2 Pana, 55-54, in the quarterfinal round of the State Farm Holiday Classic Wednesday.
"The Kelsos are doing everything for us," Alleman coach Jay Hatch joked.
Zoe was bringing the laundry to her mom, who will have some time for laundry duty. By winning, the Pioneers will play in tonight's 9 o'clock semifinal game of the 1A-2A bracket against El Paso-Gridley, which knocked off Annawan earlier on Wednesday.
Kelso scored a pair of baskets on out-of-bounds plays in the final 80 seconds to bring the Pioneers close and then put them over the top. On the final basket of the game, she isolated herself in the paint and the inbounds pass, coming from the side of the court, went right to her. She backed in, banked it in and was fouled.
The basket gave Alleman a one-point lead.
Kelso missed the free throw and Pana's all-state guard Allie Schoonover pulled down the rebound and tossed a three-quarter court shot that rattled off the rim.
"From where I was, I thought it was going in," said Hatch. "I had started working on my 'good effort' speech for the locker room."
While Kelso capped the victory, it was the reserves who brought the Pioneers (11-5) back into the game in the first half. Trailing by 8, Hatch put in his second group of five, and they played tremendously.
Making good on 6-of-7 shooting, the group of Jenna Zmuda, Ellen Kaschke, Maryanne McLaughlin, Josie Beckwith and Paige Taghon went on a 12-2 run to give the Pioneers their first lead of the game. Throw in efforts by Maddie McGuire and Taylor Johnson and all 12 Pioneers contributed to the win.
"You can't really quantify what they do a lot of the time," Hatch said. "But they played big minutes tonight, and I really believe that was a big part of the difference in the game."
Margaret Wendell had 8 rebounds and 4 assists to lead the Pioneers in those categories.
Pana played just eight girls, and when their starting forward fouled out just seconds into the fourth, they were down to seven. They suffered just their first loss of the season (15-1) and will play Annawan in today's fifth-place semifinal.
Now, the Pioneers will have eyes on them as the week ends, hoping to play in their fifth championship game. |
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