Girls Basketball: Waubonsie Survives Threat from Metea Valley

During the regular season Waubonsie Valley’s girls basketball team beat its new Indian Prairie counterpart, Metea Valley, twice by a combined 43 points.

But in the season’s third meeting, in the Class 4A Downers Grove South Regional semifinals, those previous meetings went out the window.

The second-seeded Warriors did manage to hang on against No. 18 seed Metea, 52-39 but the game was far closer than the score would indicate.

Metea led briefly early in the third quarter and had the lead cut to five points in the final three minutes before Waubonsie went on a 10-0 run to finally put the pesky Mustangs away.

“We just did not play well,” Waubonsie coach Kim Connell said. “It’s tournament time. We have no excuse for that. We didn’t underestimate Metea. They’ve been playing well. We knew they were going to give us a good game. We struggled tonight. We looked slow and tired. We just didn’t execute.”

Metea (7-22) was the team that had to play Monday just to get to this game, yet it was the Mustangs, playing without ill starting forward Anna Petersen, who came out with energy, leading 7-2 early and taking an 11-9 advantage into the second quarter.

Waubonsie (23-4) opened the second quarter on a 12-3 run to take a 21-14 lead, but Metea sliced it to 23-21 at the break.

“We came out and played sluggish in the first quarter,” Waubonsie guard Becky Williford said. “Second quarter, we kept on being sluggish. I expected (a tough game) because it’s the third time we’ve played them.

"They know what we’re doing and since we beat them twice, they’re going to come out and try to defeat us. They were the underdogs coming in and they wanted to do their best to upset us. They did that.”

Williford keyed the third quarter, scoring six points to help the Warriors take a 33-27 lead. Her layup off a steal and a rebound put-back from Tanysha Gardner-Walls gave Waubonsie a 41-32 lead.

Yet that still was not enough. Metea seemingly had an answer every time, and Lori Obendorf’s rebound lay-in cut the lead to 41-36. Waubonsie finally put the game away after that bucket, but it wasn’t an easy proposition all night.

“Honestly, I couldn’t be prouder of them,” said Metea coach Kris Kalivas, who left Waubonsie to take the Metea job when the school opened. “We’re young and we’re growing and they’ve played together for two years.

"I think we matched that and I’m proud of what we put on the floor tonight. I think we took the floor thinking that we could make this a ballgame and we could possibly win it, and they showed that for four quarters.”

Waubonsie will head back to Downers Grove South on Thursday to face Oswego East for the regional title. The No. 10 seed upset the host Mustangs on Tuesday.

“We did just enough to win, and we can’t keep doing that because the games are going to get tougher and tougher,” Williford said. “This is definitely a wake-up call for us. It’s going to push our team to work harder.”