MANLIUS β The Bureau Valley Storm took the No. 1 seed into the Starved Rock Conference seventh-grade girls basketball tournament and finished No. 1.
The Storm rode a 33-point performance by Libby Endress to a come-from-behind 39-35 win over No. 2 Ottawa in the Storm Gym at Bureau Valley Tuesday night.
Endress made 13 of 15 attempts from the free-throw line, including 8-9 in the fourth quarter, as the Storm rallied from a 31-23 deficit heading into the final six minutes. The Storm outscored Ottawa 16-4 in the fourth quarter.
Libby Endress makes a free throw for BV and then steals the inbounds pic.twitter.com/0ACW04hcYh
— Kevin H Sports Editor (@bcrsportsed) October 27, 2021
Sierrah Taylor scored a basket to tie the game at 34 with a little over a minute left to play.
The Storm (16-2) also got four points from Dani Morris.
Peru beat Princeton Logan 25-23 for third place. Logan scored with seven seconds remaining and stole the inbounds pass and got off a shot at the buzzer.
Exciting finishes in SRC games. Logan 7ths almost pulled the third place game, but fell 25-23 to Peru. BV rallied to beat Ottawa 39-35 for first pic.twitter.com/LsEvp7B3tK
— Kevin H Sports Editor (@bcrsportsed) October 27, 2021
The eighth-grade finals will take place Wednesday night. Undefeated Logan will face No. 3 Peru at 6:30 p.m. in the title game. The Logan eighth-grade class is 14-0 in conference play this calendar year (21-1 overall), but did not have a SRC tournament to play in this spring.
Bureau Valley and Ottawa will play for third place at 5 p.m. Thursday.