Girls Basketball: Haley Videckis guides unbeaten Bartlett past rival South Elgin
Updated: December 15, 2011 10:17PM
After a half of trading baskets with rival South Elgin, Bartlett senior forward Haley Videckis had seen enough.
The Indiana-bound star not only won her individual matchup with Storm star Rebecca Smith, but she took complete control of the game with a career-high 30 points in a 66-57 victory over South Elgin.
“I think sometimes we can be a little hesitant with our offensive decisions and Haley just kind of figured, ‘Hey, I’m going to get aggressive and take care of things,’ “ Bartlett coach Denise Sarna said.
“When she gets hot, she can really put points up on the board really quick.”
Videckis also had 10 rebounds to go with her 30 points and helped hold Loyola-bound Smith to 16 points as the Hawks improved to 12-0 overall and 5-0 in the Upstate Eight Valley with the road victory.
“We decided to stick back to our original game plan at halftime,” said Videckis. “We took advantage of the height differential. And we hadn’t been doing a good job of trapping their wings, which if you do it really slows up their offense and kept Becca out of the center.
“So once we got that going, that just fired our offense and we were able to execute our fast break.”
Leading 29-27 after a half that saw five lead changes and each team owning leads of no more than four points, the Hawks outscored South Elgin 26-12 in the third quarter as Videckis struck for 13 of her points.
Bartlett went on a 14-3 run over the first 4:45 of the third quarter and for all intents and purposes locked up the win. Of the 14 points, 12 came on the fast break or on layups.
“We had a game plan and we didn’t quite execute it in the first half,” Sarna said. “I was actually worried about this game with a hostile environment on the road.
“South Elgin is a good team. They came ready to play and played hard in the first half. We didn’t execute the game plan then, but we kind of turned it up in the second half and played like we’re more capable of.”
Bartlett ran the lead up to as much as 61-41 with a 6-0 run in the early fourth quarter before South Elgin had a late run and got closer than any team has all season to beating the Hawks. Previously, no one had been closer than 13.
Savanah Uveges led South Elgin in scoring with 18 points while Smith worked hard for shots and never got to the line in the game.
“South Elgin shot a respectable 42 percent from the floor (22-of-52) for the game. Coach Tim Prendergast thought the first half was actually the key and not the third quarter.
“I was really disappointed going into the locker room,” Prendergast said. “I thought we played really good defense. We should have been up 42-28 or so. We gave up a lot of points by missing a lot of bunnies.”
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