Sports
Girls Basketball: End of the Season for Downers Grove South
The Wolves upset the Mustangs 52-48 to set up Thursday's regional showdown with Waubonsie Valley.
DOWNERS GROVE–Oswego East’s girls basketball team seemed to have the group to reach the program’s first-ever regional title game last season.
When that group fell short, and graduated six key members, coach Nate Eimer couldn’t have envisioned that this would be that season.
Turns out, the Wolves proved him wrong.
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Oswego East sprung a 52-48 upset on the seventh-seeded hosts from Downers Grove South in the regional semifinal Tuesday to set up the Wolves’ first-ever regional title game appearance. The 10th-seeded Wolves will face second-seeded Waubonsie Valley Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
“It’s unbelievable,” Eimer said. “Who would have thought that we were going to lose six seniors that played a lot last year and this group would be the one that came back and got it done. It’s a testament to how hard they worked, their teamwork, the great kids and the fans. We’re just blessed.”
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The Wolves (21-6) set the tone at the beginning of both halves. Oswego East took a 15-5 lead at the outset, with a Brittney Glende three-pointer and three straight buckets from Arneasa Blair capping that run off. Downers Grove South (16-11) responded with a 12-2 run, however, and took a 25-24 lead into the half.
Coming out of the break, the Wolves came out strong yet again, scoring the first seven points to take a 31-25 lead.
The game remained tight the rest of the way, however. Carly Saraceno gave the Mustangs their final lead of the game, 44-43, with 3:42 left in the fourth. Oswego East stayed close thanks to turnover differential. In the first half, the Wolves turned the ball over 10 times. They had only one turnover in the second half and forced 11 DGS turnovers in the second half.
“We talked about that,” Eimer said. “In the first half, we had 10, and we needed to change that, I thought the kids did a great job with that. I thought the second half was all about the hustle plays. I thought we beat them to some loose balls that we weren’t beating them to in the first half.”
One of those hustle plays helped put the game away for Oswego East. With 2:05 left, Ameera George tracked down a loose ball and put it in, getting fouled in the process. The free throw gave the Wolves a 48-44 lead and the Mustangs, despite a late Saraceno three-pointer, got no closer than three points the rest of the way.
“It feels great,” Oswego East senior Kayla Boers said. “The emotion is overcoming me. Everyone on the team left their hearts on the court. It’s just great.”
The reward for the Wolves is Waubonsie Valley, which survived a scare at the hands of Metea Valley on Tuesday. But they already have taken another step in their program’s history.
“As a program, people don’t realize sometimes that it takes a while to take those steps,” Eimer said. “Every year we’ve been taking steps, and these kids took a huge step forward for us tonight.”
