Girls Basketball: Huntley downs Dundee-Crown, ends skid

Updated: February 1, 2012 10:06PM

On senior night, Haley Ream and her Huntley teammates did the same thing Wednesday to their five-game losing streak that a period does to a sentence — they ended it.

Ream scored 16 points, made 10 rebounds, and blanketed Dundee-Crown scoring leader Ali Sanders in a complete team defensive effort that resulted a 46-34 Red Raiders victory, one that left the Chargers two games behind Cary-Grove in the Fox Valley Valley with two left.

“It’s been really hard,” Ream said of a losing streak that took the Raiders from Valley contenders to a middle-of-the-pack team. “In the beginning of the season we were all working as a team.”

It was all team Wednesday for the Red Raiders (12-11, 6-4), especially on defense. They held the Chargers to only two points over a stretch of 14:26 ending the first quarter and spanning through much of the third quarter.

“We got back finally to defending the way we had been earlier in the season,” Huntley coach Steve Raethz said. “It’s been a tough stretch there losing five in a row, but it was great to get back in the saddle again.”

Ream, a 5-foot-10 junior forward, triggered it. Not only did she have the biggest part in holding Sanders to only five points through three quarters after the Chargers’ scoring leader had 16 in their earlier game, but she also made six steals over the first three quarters. She didn’t score a single second-quarter point, but held Sanders scoreless that quarter when the Red Raiders outscored D-C 8-2 to turn a 13-8 deficit into a 16-15 halftime lead. Three of her steals came in the second quarter.

“(Sanders) is a really good driving person and can shoot the ball real well,” Ream said. “Tonight our main focus was on helping me out as much as possible when I was on her, helping anyone out, hedging a lot. Our main focus was talking and team defense and that’s something we’ve been having trouble with sometimes.”

The Chargers made 17 turnovers total for the second and third quarters but hung on for a while with their own defense. Then Huntley started the fourth quarter with a 7-0 run with four different player scoring for a 32-22 lead. Ream’s rebound layup culminated the run.

D-C (14-9, 7-3) cut it to 32-26, but two layups by Ream, a layup by Abbey Shaw and two foul shots by Alexandria Weidner pushed the lead to 40-28 with only three minutes left. The Chargers never got closer than nine again.

“We had seven uncontested turnovers in the second quarter,” Chargers coach Michelle Russell said. “That doesn’t help anything. We’ve got to just handle the ball better.

“Our defense was pretty good but we just turned the ball over so many times we didn’t give ourselves a chance to score.”

Shaw had 13 points and Samantha Andrews 10 points and 11 rebounds for Huntley.

The Chargers shot just 32 percent (13-of-41) and had a game-high 11 points from Diamond Williams and 10 from Carlin Faulkner. Their only chance for a title now would be to share it by winning their last two, including one over Cary-Grove, and hoping Cary-Grove also lost its other game to Huntley.

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