Girls Basketball: Loyola’s third-quarter run tops Lake Zurich

Updated: December 22, 2011 10:23AM

Loyola wiped out a 30-25 third-quarter deficit with a 15-2 run, holding Lake Zurich without a field goal for nearly 11 minutes, to win its first-round game of the Suburban Holiday Showcase 47-40 Wednesday at St. Francis.

Anna Schueler led the No. 19 Ramblers (10-2) with 14 points, including three three-pointers during the decisive run.

“The coaches told me to shoot the ball with confidence,” Schueler said. “I wasn’t shooting the ball with confidence earlier in the game. The team gave me good looks and I just knocked them down.”

Lake Zurich (8-4) closed the first half on a 7-2 run to take a 24-21 lead into the locker room. A jumper by 5-foot-11 senior Dori Darras (seven rebounds) extended the Bears’ advantage to 30-25 with 5:45 left in the third quarter.

That was the last field goal by Lake Zurich until only 2:56 remained in the game.

“When we got in at halftime (coach Jeremy Schoenecker) sort of explained to us – he yelled at us, I guess – that we can’t just go out there and play so lazy on defense,” Schueler said. “He sort of got in our faces a little bit. We needed it.

“We came out so lethargic in the first half,” she added. “We tend to do that a lot lately. We need to pick up the energy in the first half. Our defense leads to offense, like most teams, and when we have that intensity on defense, we’re really tough to beat.”

Trailing 40-32, Lake Zurich cut the deficit to four points with 2:35 remaining on a basket by Kathrine Anderson and a pair of free throws by Cathryne Spear. But Loyola’s Colleen McShane converted three of four free throws to extend the lead to 43-36 with 1:13 left.

Michelle Ricolcol had 13 points and four steals and Lauren Kriz added nine points for Loyola. Stephanie Schmid led Lake Zurich with 12 points, Spear had nine and Anderson added eight.

“That’s why the three-pointer is a great weapon,” Lake Zurich coach Chris Bennett said. “They buried a couple of three-pointers on us and that swung the momentum. Sometimes you struggle to get it back. We never got it back.”

The loss was the third straight for Lake Zurich, which entered the game on the heels of back-to-back league losses to North Suburban Conference rivals Zion-Benton and Stevenson.

“There were definitely some spurts that we played well,” Bennett said. “We ran our offense better than we did our last two games. I thought we did that a little bit better tonight. But we’re still searching, still searching.”

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