Youngsters Pave the Way for Potential 20-Win Spartan Season

A youth movement has taken over the Romeoville High School girls basketball team.

Three sophomores led the charge into Burbank on Tuesday night when visiting . 

Romeoville coach Julio Carrasco knew defense would be key and wasted no time in turning up the heat. The Spartans opened the game with a full court press and forced the Rams into seven first quarter turnovers.

“We had scouted them this year, my assistant coach Dan Kelly went and watched them against Oak Forest and he thought their ball dribbling was kind of skeptical so we decided to come out and press a little bit,” Carrasco said.  “We got some easy baskets off of steals and like I mentioned earlier, our defense leads into our offense and that’s what the real key is.”

Reavis held an early lead two-point lead in the first quarter, but a 14-0 Romeoville run over the final three and a half minutes of the period put the Spartans up 16-4 at the first break. 

The Spartans used their transition game to open up a lead in the second quarter and sophomore Kiera Curry made her presence felt, scoring seven points with a combination of post moves and back cuts that left her open for lay-ups.

“The way their defense was setup it was very open, the middle was really open most of the time so we really strived on driving and feeding our post and everything. The backside was also open and we saw that, so that helped the flow of our offense,” Curry said.

Down 33-13 with 1:26 left in the half, Reavis seemed to awaken offensively, scoring on their final 3 possessions with two jumpers from junior guard Natalia  Skolarus and a steal and lay-up at the halftime buzzer by Ali McCafferty. 

The Rams kept their scoring up in the third quarter, but turnovers continued to plague Reavis and the Spartans took full advantage by cashing in on easy lay-ups. 

Reavis committed 30 turnovers and coach Maggie Miskowicz was not happy with her team’s performance.

“Thirty turnovers, that’s not going to beat anybody,” Miskowicz said.

The win pushed Romeoville’s record to 19-6 on the season, and winning 20 games is definitely something this team is thinking about, Smith said.

“That would mean a lot,” Smith said.  “In our meeting, we were talking about how most teams at RHS didn’t get 20 wins and we had to look up all the wins they got and it was only five or six teams.  It’s just a big honor to be one of the people who are going to get 20 wins if we win the next game.”

The Spartans have one game remaining before the regional playoffs begin, and Carrasco said despite such a dominant performance, the team still has room for improvement.

“I thought the offense looked great, but we’re out of position sometimes. And against Plainfield East, Lockport and hopefully Bolingbrook if we get that far, those teams aren’t going to have those mistakes that Reavis had,” he said. “They’re going to hit some open jumpers, they’re going to attack the hoop and one thing that I don’t like is when we get ourselves in a lot of foul trouble. And we have to definitely stop that.”

The Spartans already know their first round opponent will be Lockport, but Carrasco said the team isn’t looking ahead just yet.

“The team mindset is we want to get that 20^th win for the regular season, which is this Thursday against Plainfield East, then we’ll worry about Lockport," he said. "Lockport beat us before earlier in the season, I think we’ve gotten a little bit better, so we’ll worry about Lockport once we beat Plainfield East.”

With the young guns that Romeoville has in hand this year, you can’t help but like their chances.