Girls basketball: La Salle-Peru’s Brooklyn Ficek reaches 1,000 career points in loss to Prairie Central

LA SALLE – La Salle-Peru senior guard Brooklyn Ficek has been a true standout on both ends of the floor for the girls basketball team since her freshman season.

Ficek entered Tuesday’s game with Prairie Central at A.J. Sellet Gymnasium needing 10 points to reach 1,000 for her career.

With under a minute to go in L-P’s 52-45 loss to the Hawks, Ficek reached that goal with a back-court steal turned layup.

Ficek finished with a team-best 10 points in the contest along with two assists, five steals and a pair of blocked shots.

“I put a lot of pressure on myself tonight and I’m glad it’s over,” Ficek said while wiping away a tear from under her eye. “I’ve been getting asked for like the last two weeks ‘When you going to get 1,000?’ I hit my first 3-pointer (30 seconds in) and I thought to myself ‘Let’s go’ but I just struggled offensively pretty much all night. I feel like I played really good defense, but I just could get shots to fall.”

The two squads were tied at 11-11 after the opening quarter, but PC held a 27-26 lead at the intermission and led 40-36 heading to the final quarter before using an 8-0 burst to begin the fourth to push the advantage to double digits.

“I pictured tonight being a game that I would just go off, score 25 or something points, and we end up with a win,” Ficek said. “While I’m glad the pressure is off as far as the career points thing goes, I really wish I could have played better and helped us win to go along with it.

“I still have so many goals I want to reach this season for myself, but the one that I want as much as anything is for us to win as many games as we can. I feel like we had a very good chance to win here tonight, but we just didn’t play well, we just made to many turnovers.”

La Salle-Peru (2-4) turned the ball over 24 times, gave up 22 offensive rebounds and shot just 31% (15-48) from the field.

Behind Ficek on the stat sheet were Taylor Martyn and Kaylee Abens, who each netted nine points, while Addison Dutlinger had six points, eight rebounds, four assists and two steals.

Prairie Central received a game-high 20 points, including five 3-pointers and six rebounds, from Chloe Sisco, while Mariya Sisco posted 16 points, 11 rebounds and four steals.

“We didn’t really finish many possessions tonight on either end,” La Salle-Peru coach Adam Spencer said. “We gave up way, way, way, too many offensive rebounds, committed a ton of turnovers and only shot 31% from the floor. You’re not going to win many, if any, games doing that.

“It seemed like even when we got a stop on defense, we weren’t aggressive enough to get after the rebound.”

Spencer, although in his first year as head coach, has been around the program to see the growth of Ficek’s game over the past seasons, including her shortened sophomore season because of the pandemic. He said what impressed him the most Tuesday was the fact that while her offensive game wasn’t clicking, Ficek’s play at the defensive end was solid.

“Brooklyn had a super strong defensive game for us in my eyes,” Spencer said. “She’s going to play at the next level and her defense is a big reason why. Sure, she struggled on the offensive end and didn’t have the type of game she was hoping for on a night where she goes over 1,000 career points, but she did a very good job in a lot of other areas.

“Some nights the ball refuses to go in, but that’s just how it goes.”

The next game for the Cavaliers will be at home on Friday when they open the Interstate 8 Conference schedule against Plano.