Girls Basketball: Proviso East varsity a no-show vs Trinity

Updated: December 28, 2011 10:20PM

The record books will show that Trinity defeated Proviso East on Wednesday to win the championship of the Suburban Holiday Showcase in Wilmette.

But the highly-anticipated matchup between the west suburban powers was barely a game at all.

With its varsity team in Ohio to play in another tournament, Proviso East sent

its JV squad to face the No. 4 Blazers (13-1). The inevitable blowout ended with a 65-10 final score.

Trinity coach Ed Stritzel said he had heard talk of a possible Proviso East scheduling conflict a few weeks back. But he assumed the issue had been resolved.

The coach said he scouted Proviso East’s varsity, ranked No. 13, the previous day and prepared as if he was going to face that squad, whose record is now 13-3.

Stritzel said he heard more “rumblings” about Proviso possibly not playing on the eve of the contest, but he did not get the official word until he arrived at the gym for Wednesday’s game.

“It’s unfortunate because our kids were looking forward to just a great Christmas tournament. We’re defending champions and we wanted to defend our championship from last year,” Stritzel said. “We want to compete against the best. We felt we were playing well and were hoping to get Proviso’s best shot tonight to end this thing.

“But we can’t control the opponent. We can only control what we’re doing. We’re

just happy we got through it and nobody got injured. We’re happy we’re the two-time champions.”

For the record, senior Megan Podkowa led the Blazers with 22 points, senior Shannon McGinnis had 11 and junior Taylor Nazon had nine.

With just 10 players in uniform, Trinity did not have so-called scrubs to play in the contest. So, Stritzel resorted to calling off the pressure defense. He eventually told his team to avoid fast breaks and instructed certain players not

to shoot three pointers.  

Marc Jones, the Proviso East sophomore coach who took charge of the team Wednesday, said he was satisfied with how Trinity handled the situation.

“It was good that the Trinity coach didn’t press us. I tip my hat to him with

that part,” he said.

Trinity led 27-0 before the Pirates scored their first points. The score was 27-4 after one quarter, 42-6 at halftime and 56-8 after three quarters. Proviso East reached double digits with 3:30 remaining in the fourth quarter.

Podkowa, senior Alyssa Dengler and Nazon were Trinity’s three representatives on

the all-tournament team.

© 2013 Sun-Times Media, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or distributed without permission. For more information about reprints and permissions, visit www.suntimesreprints.com. To order a reprint of this article, click here.