Weekend of progress

The Patriots finished up their regular season this past Thursday and Friday with losses to Hinsdale Adventist Academy and Portage Christian School.

On Thursday, our girls returned to Hinsdale to take on the Hurricanes, against whom they began their season. The girls were interested to see how much they improved from that game, which they lost 41-12. And after the first quarter, the improvement was evident. Certainly on defense, as the Patriots held Hinsdale to one point while scoring four. But then Hinsdale found their offense. And then some. Hinsdale exploited the man-to-man defense our girls started out in with two quick baskets and floodgates were opened. With liberal assistance from the male half of the referee team, Hinsdale outscored the Patriots 18-4 in the quarter for a 19-8 lead. The aggressive play, especially by Number 0 of Hinsdale (who didn't score at all in the first meeting), continued in the third quarter and the score at the end of three was 29-11.

In the fourth, the female ref decided to make some of the calls the other should have been making, the girls started making some shots, and the scoring in the quarter was even at nine each for a final score of 38-20. The girls didn't run the plays well or pass well, so we can't pin it on the refs (as much as I would like to).

The Patriots lack of depth again showed, especially with the questionable refereeing. Becca fouled out and Rachel finished with four fouls. The girls did play pretty good defense, especially on number 33, who torched us for fourteen in the first meeting. She got only two this time on one for twelve shooting. Number 0, however, when she found out she could lower her shoulder and knock people out of the way, kept doing it while scoring fifteen.

The pace of this game was slower than most of the game this year, so rebounds were scarce. Also, while 33 didn't score, she did handle the ball well so steals also were hard to come by. Stats: Kara had nine points, Becca four, Rachel four, Alyssa two and Lee one. Becca had seven rebounds, Kara had three assists and two steals along with nine turnovers. Becca and Rachel each had two blocks.

On Friday night, the girls went out to the Courts of Northwest Indiana, in Valparaiso to play Portage Christian. We didn't really know anything about Portage, except that we had heard from Victory that one of their two six-footers who played for them last year was now playing for Portage. After the first quarter, we thought maybe this was going to be like the Luther East game. Portage played pretty packed-in defense and the girls shot over it. And a lot went in, especially threes. The girls make three threes and three two to total fifteen, while giving up twelve.

The Patriots started out strongly in the second, scoring the first six for a nine point lead. The fouls started adding up, however. Portage outscored us 8-4 in the remainder of the quarter to pull within five at half at 25-20. Worse than this was that Rachel picked up her third foul with about forty seconds left in the quarter. The other notable event in the half was the insertion of number 14 into Portage's lineup. This little seventh-grader was quite the pickpocket, stealing the ball repeatedly and going in for layups. She had thirteen of Portage's first half points.

Portage chipped away at the lead in the third, as our shots stopped dropping. After shooting 38% in the first half (good shooting for us), the girls shot three for fifteen in the quarter. The Patriots still led after three, however, at 31-29.

Because of foul trouble, Andrew had to play all of the junior high girls at the same time for stretches in the fourth. #14 kept up her thieving and scoring, getting eight in the quarter before fouling out. #24 then starting scoring, and we couldn't keep up. Portage outscored the Patriots 14-7 in the quarter and won 43-38.

Kara had thirteen points; Alyssa and Rachel had seven, Becca had six, Lee had three and Cassidy had two. Becca had fourteen rebounds and Rachel had seven. Kara had six assists and Becca had two blocks. Ballhandling was not prominent in this game; while Kara had eleven steals she also had thirteen turnovers.

State tournament is next weekend in Yorkville at Cross Lutheran School. As mentioned previously, we play Gurnee at 5:00. If we lose we play again at 7:00. If we win, we play on Saturday at 3:00. I have the location in the calendar event at the bottom of the page.