Kit Girls Rally For Regional Title

The T-shirts worn by the Evanston girls basketball players feature the word “Believe” on the back this season.

And a strong belief system can take you a long way --- all the way to a championship.

Charity Bryant believed she could play through the pain of an injured shoulder.

Havana Van Wyk believed she’d make that next 3-point field goal attempt.

And the Wildkits never lost faith when they trailed host Glenbrook South by nine points early in the fourth quarter Thursday night in the championship game of the Class 4A GBS Regional tournament.

Evanston rallied in the final five minutes of the game and earned its first regional title since 2022, tripping fourth-seeded Glenbrook South by a 54-51 margin and advancing to the semifinals of the Maine South Sectional.

Bryant could barely lift her shoulder in the aftermath --- but scored a game-high 25 points, 8 of them coming with the season on the line in the fourth quarter.

And Van Wyk buried the biggest 3-point shot of her career on the same court where she endured a nightmarish 0-for-12 night from 3-point range when the two teams met during the regular season.

It all added up to a chance for the Wildkits to cut down the championship nets after losing in the regional finals for three years in a row. They’ll take a 17-10 record into Tuesday’s 6 p.m. showdown with top-ranked Loyola Academy, which advanced with a 68-45 romp over Chicago Taft.

That belief didn’t happen overnight. It was built in over the course of a season in which ETHS head coach Brittanny Johnson regularly put her players in “impossible” scenarios during practice sessions and sometimes made them compete on the court against members of the coaching staff --- TaMia Banks, Steve Wool, Travis Ransom, Mike Mallett --- who are all former players who didn’t give them an inch.

That preparation paid off Thursday.

“I don’t have the words to describe it. That was magical!” Johnson exclaimed after the come-from-behind win. “There is such a hunger on this team and they wanted to win so badly.

“I put them in impossible scenarios all the time in practice --- like down 12 points with a minute to go on the clock --- and most of the time they walk out of the gym hating me for putting them through something like that. We talk a lot about having the mindset to do the impossible. Our mindset is so much different now as a team --- and it’s turned into a championship mindset.

“I am so proud of Charity Bryant. She took a shot in the shoulder tonight and she stuck in there anyway. She was crying at halftime. I can’t speak enough about what she did tonight. I told her games like this are what legends are made of, and she really locked in after I said that.”

Bryant said her shoulder actually bothered her prior to the start of the game, and the first time she tried to muscle an opponent down low and made contact, the pain stabbed at her shoulder the rest of the night.

That didn’t stop the sophomore standout from putting the hurt on the Titans. She converted 7-of-14 field goal attempts and added 7 rebounds and 4 steals to her stat line. Junior Payton King chipped in 13 points, and freshman Simone Hewitt scored a double-double (10 points, 12 rebounds) for the winners.

“It feels so good (to win a regional), and I’m glad we could win it for the seniors,” Bryant said. “My shoulder hurt really bad, and we were down nine points, but it didn’t matter because this is the one chance you get to win a championship. I just wanted to win. I just had to keep playing. We only had this one opportunity --- and we did it.

“I really wanted to be able to say we were regional champs going into next year. I thought we played good defense (in practice) against the coaches. It was easier tonight because GBS is not as aggressive as our coaches. They can get pretty physical.”

“Playing against Coach Mike (Mallett), he shows you no mercy at all. The pressure he puts on us really helped prepare us for the (state) playoffs,” added Van Wyk. “Coach Johnson will give us a situation like down 12 with a minute left, something impossible like that. She’ll say you just have to figure it out. Her belief in us is what motivates us.

“Kudos to Coach Johnson for the way she prepared us for this game. We used three different presses (in the fourth quarter, forcing six GBS turnovers) and that helped us get it done.”

Van Wyk’s only 3-point basket of the game --- after she missed her first five tries --- gave Evanston the lead for good at 47-44 with 3 minutes, 50 seconds left in the final quarter. It was part of a 16-0 ETHS run as GBS went scoreless for six minutes.

The shot from the right corner hit nothing but net for the nerve-wracked senior forward.

“I was so terrified tonight I thought I’d throw up. It just feels absolutely amazing to win this regional!” exclaimed Van Wyk. “My teammates just kept telling me to keep shooting --- that’s what shooters do --- and when it needs to go in, it will. And it did!

“It’s all a big blur to me right now and I don’t really remember that shot. I don’t think I had any hesitation. My teammates made me believe in myself. I hate myself for being so scared tonight. I should have known how awesome this team is, and that we’d come through.”

Glenbrook South, which finished 23-10, didn’t go down without a fight. The Titans scored 7 points in the last 47 seconds and did make it a one-possession game on a 3-pointer by sophomore Niki Davorija with 18 seconds left on the clock to pull her team within 53=51.

But after King split a pair of free throws, the Titans were unable to get a clean look at the basket and Bryant deflected a last-second one-handed heave by Riley Des Groseilliers as time ran out.

GBS got 13 points apiece from Nora Rodgers, Brea Morrison and Davorija. Both Rodgers and Morrison fouled out in the fourth quarter.

The losers only shot 33 percent from the field in the first half, yet Evanston only led 25-24 (on a pair of Bryant free throws) at the intermission. The defensive duel continued into the second half when the Titans switched to a 1-3-1 zone and the Kits had trouble finding high percentage shots of their own.

GBS scored the last seven points of the third period --- 3-pointers by Rodgers and Davorija, and a free throw from Morrison --- to take a 38-35 advantage into the fourth quarter.

“We executed well against that 1-3-1 when we needed to, when it mattered,” Johnson explained. “I think GBS thought they’d iced the game in that fourth quarter. Maybe they would have against Evanston last year --- but this is a different Evanston team.”