Girls basketball: Seneca, Princeton answer early wake-up call for wins at St. Bede

PERU – Seneca and Princeton answered the early wake-up call in the Lady Bruins Christmas Classic at St. Bede Academy on Tuesday morning.

The Irish rallied to defeat the host Bruins 45-41 in the 8:30 a.m. opener. The Tigresses followed with a 49-39 win over Sandwich in the second game.

It was just what the Tigresses, who lost to Fieldcrest in last year’s title game, wanted to do, second-year coach Darcy Kepner said.

“Our goal is to get back to the championship game. So you’ve got to win to get there. Just one game at a time,” she said.

There was a full slate of seven games Tuesday, with another seven scheduled for Wednesday. The finals will be contested Friday.

Seneca 45, St. Bede 41: The Irish had a typical Brian Holman-coached victory – not necessarily real pretty, but methodically plugging away.

They trailed 22-20 at the half and 33-28 after three quarters. The Irish began to click in the fourth quarter, however, outscoring the Bruins 17-8 to pull out the win.

“I don’t know if I know what I’m doing or don’t know what I’m doing, but I do know our teams generally seem to stay steady through ups and downs,” said Holman, the former Hall coach. “It’s a constant battle. This is the time of the year where you can kind of relax. We had a good practice yesterday.

“We’re tough. We may not make it look pretty. We got down there, our best player [Kennedy Hartwig] rolled an ankle, and nobody seemed to mind. We just did what we do and were fortunate enough to come out with a win.”

St. Bede coach Stephanie Mickley was especially pleased with her team’s play.

“I’m very happy. We led for quite a bit of the game. We had very balanced scoring, which made a huge difference. And I think we surprised them,” she said.

“Our defense was good. We’ve just got to make our free throws down the stretch and not buckle to ball pressure. That’s the first team we’ve seen ball pressure four quarters. We’re young, but we stayed right with them.”

Both teams had balanced scoring.

Kristal DeLaTorre led the Bruins with 10 points, with Ali Bosnich adding nine and Lily Bosnich eight.

Mickley said the Bruins have adjusted without having injured junior Ella Hermes, “because we have to” and have been distributing her points and rebounds.

For Seneca (11-4), Faith Baker had 10 points, Lainie Olson and Kennedy Hartwig had eight each, and Ella Sterling added seven.

The Irish went on to play Putnam County later Tuesday, while St. Bede faced the Rock Island JV.

St. Bede will play in the first game Wednesday against top seed Fieldcrest and face PC at 5:15 p.m. Seneca also will face Fieldcrest at 3:30 p.m. in a key clash in the Green Pool.

Princeton 49, Sandwich 39: The Tigresses jumped out to an 8-0 lead but couldn’t seem to put the Indians away. They led 23-14 at the half and 37-25 after three quarters only to have Sandwich close within five points early in the fourth quarter.

“We hadn’t played in a week and a half, almost two it feels like, and the last [game] wasn’t our best. We were just anxious to get on the floor, and we probably knew there would be a little rust, but we played through it in the end,” Kepner said.

The key to getting the win, Kepner said, was “staying in the game and controlling what we can and not letting one thing get us down or them going on a run too much. I felt like we responded when we needed to.”

Driscoll led the Tigresses with 10 points. PHS also got eight points each from Keighley Davis and Mariah Hobson, seven points from Miyah Fox and six each from Olivia Gartin and Isa Ibarra.

Kaylin Herren led Sandwich with 12 points.

The Tigresses will come back with two games Wednesday, facing Kewanee at 1:45 p.m. and Eureka at 7 p.m.