Girls Basketball: Cary-Grove too much for Dundee-Crown

Updated: February 7, 2012 10:23PM

On senior night for the Dundee-Crown girls basketball team, visiting Cary-Grove wasn’t shy about spoiling it.

Though the Fox Valley Conference Valley Division standings have been solidified with Cary-Grove at the top and Dundee-Crown in second, there was no shortage of fireworks in a game where the Trojans took advantage of Chargers turnovers en route to a 56-45 win.

“It’s a tough thing coming in on someone’s senior night and these girls have six or seven seniors on the team and they rose to the challenge and gave us a battle — which we knew they would,” said Cary-Grove coach Rod Saffer.

Behind a strong night of shooting, 45 percent from the field for the game, 5-foot-10 guard Joslyn Nicholson was able to break down the Chargers (15-10, 8-4) defense, leading her team with 20 points.

“Our main goal tonight was to trap the ball because we know that they like ball screens, even though rebounding wasn’t the greatest for us, we still worked hard on trapping and switching,” said Nicholson.

The Trojans (17-8, 11-1) used a variety of defensive sets, from a 1-2-2 zone to a 2-2-1, in many ways to try and limit the offense of star guard Ali Sanders.

The Chargers senior guard was able to put up a game-high 24 points, which included a first-quarter buzzer beater from halfcourt. Sanders, however, was held to just 1 of 3 shooting in the fourth quarter.

“We were having trouble with their double teams and getting tons of turnovers (23 total). If we would have been able to control the ball we would have had a lot of 4-on-3 situations,” said Sanders, who will continue her basketball career next year at Florida Southern University.

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