Girls basketball: Length leads Plainfield South past Plainfield North

PLAINFIELD – One thing stands out when Plainfield South takes the court.

Length.

The Cougars have three players – Destynia McGruder, Jazlynn Foster and Demi Page – who stand 5-foot-10 or taller. Just as important as their height, however, is the length of their arms and the speed of their feet, which they use to their advantage on the defensive end to deflect passes and force turnovers.

Their defensive prowess was on display Thursday night, when the Cougars went on the road to defeat District 202 rival Plainfield North 68-58.

South (11-6) was relentless on the defensive end, forcing Plainfield North (7-9) into 24 turnovers, six in each quarter. Many of those turnovers resulted in easy baskets for the Cougars, which is what they want.

“We are a defensive-minded team,” said Foster, who led all scorers with 19 points to go with a game-high 10 rebounds. “Defense is something you can do every game. There are some games where your shot might be there or it might not, but you can always play defense.

“We work a lot on our defense. We have a lot of length, and we can lock people down.”

Plainfield North was able to stay in the game most of the way, however. When they were able to negotiate the South defense, the Tigers got 13 points from Sydney Scott, 12 each from Kaitlyn Sedillo and Anaya Patterson, 10 from Bella Gruber and eight from freshman Isabella Koldoff.

The Tigers raced out to a 9-3 lead before South outscored them 11-2 the rest of the first quarter to take a 14-11 lead. South opened the second quarter with a 3-pointer by Breanna Cotton before back-to-back 3-pointers by Koldoff tied it at 17. The teams traded baskets again to make it 19-all before South took the lead on a free throw by Foster and a 3-pointer by Page, who scored 14 points. The Cougars took a 32-29 lead into halftime.

“They are very athletic,” North coach Matt Major said. “It was hard to sustain any flow on offense because they were very disruptive. And we didn’t handle the ball well.

“They were able to get some easy baskets off the turnovers, and nothing was easy for us on the offensive end.”

A 3-pointer by Gruber to start the second half tied the game at 32, but South turned up the defense and erupted for a 12-3 run that gave the Cougars a 44-35 lead. North sandwiched a 3-pointer by Patterson and one by Sedillo around a free throw by McGruder, who scored 10 points, to cut the lead to 45-41, but another spurt by South, this one 7-2, gave the Cougars a 52-44 lead entering the fourth.

The victory gives South four more wins than it had all of last year.

“It’s very different from last year,” Foster said. “This coach [Alana Warren] saw that we are all about the same size, so our offense is positionless. If you can score in the post, you can also go out and hit a 3-pointer. That really frees all of us up and everyone is a threat.

“And it’s always fun to beat another Plainfield school.”

Warren was pleased with her team’s performance, especially on defense.

“There’s a lot of excitement on this team,” she said. “I wanted to bring my type of excitement to this team. I am a different type of coach, and they bought into what I wanted to do all summer.

“There is no ‘me’ ball, and it all starts on the defensive end. We want to be known as the best defensive team in the conference.”