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Monday night, 32 teams will compete in 16 super-sectional girls basketball games throughout the IHSA’s four classes, with the winners punching their tickets to the IHSA State Finals at Illinois State University’s CEFCU Arena in Normal Thursday-Saturday.
Locally, two area teams are among the teams left in the hunt. Bishop McNamara will travel to Tolono Unity to face off against Mt. Carmel in Class 2A at 6:30 p.m. while Cissna Park heads to Farmer City Blue Ridge to take on Decatur St. Teresa in Class 1A at 6 p.m.
Bishop McNamara looks for first state trip in 10 years
The last time Bishop McNamara made a trip to state, all-state and eventual Rutgers guard Khadaizha Sanders led the team to its first and only state championship. And if the Fightin' Irish (27-7) make it back to state for the first time since then, Sanders, now the head coach, will once again play a pivotal role in that.
“It means something to me because like I said to them, we haven’t [been to state] since my senior year,” Sanders said after Thursday’s 69-38 win over Watseka-Milford in the Herscher Sectional championship. “It’s a pride thing. Anything I’m involved in, anything my name is attached to, I give it my all. The results are finally showing with all the hard work that’s gone into this.”
When Sanders took over three years ago, she inherited a then-sophomore class that’s since developed into an all-time class at a program that’s won 27 regionals, 10 sectionals and made seven trips to state. Led by Trinity Davis, whose half-court buzzer-beater to end the first half propelled the Irish to a dominant second half Thursday, the team’s five seniors have dedicated themselves to restoring a once-proud program to glory.
While they’re getting closer to their ultimate goal of a state championship, they’ll first have to get to state, which means winning the Class 2A Tolono Unity Super-Sectional. They’ll have to get past a Mt. Carmel (29-4) team that relatively flew under the statewide radar for much of the season, but has an impressive resume as anyone left in the field.
Their sectional championship came in the form of a 42-32 victory over a Teutopolis team that spent most of the season in the IHSA Class 2A AP Poll, and their regular season included wins over other elite downstate programs like Effingham St. Anthony and Paris, the latter of which is the only common opponent McNamara and Mt. Carmel had this season. The Golden Aces earned a 67-53 win at Paris on Jan. 30 while the Fightin’ Irish were dealt a 47-32 loss in the third-place game of the small school bracket of the State Farm Holiday Classic Dec. 30.
If the Irish play the way they did in the second half of each of their sectional games, where they outscored Seneca 33-12 in the semifinals and Watseka-Milford 41-13 in the championship, not only do they have a chance at a trip to state, but to win the whole thing.
Battle-tested Cissna Park looking to add basketball state trophy to third-place volleyball finish
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While some of the skills and athletic traits from volleyball can carry over to basketball, there’s no doubt that a winning mentality and culture can certainly cross over from one sport to another. And for Cissna Park, that’s good news.
The Timberwolves (29-4) are now back-to-back sectional champions on the hardwood, and if they get past St. Teresa in Monday’s Class 1A, they’ll not just make the third state trip in program history, but make it 2-for-2 on the school year after a third-place finish at the Girls Volleyball Class 1A State Finals last November.
It was the second straight state trip for the volleyball team, a team that was almost entirely made up of the same group of girls as the basketball team. Point guard Addison Lucht said after last week’s 49-39 win over Roanoke-Benson in the Class 1A Midland Sectional championship that their experience in volleyball, as well as understanding how hard they need to work, can pay dividends come Monday night, and if all goes well, this weekend.
“A lot of these are the same girls, so we know how to play in big games,” Lucht said. “That experience is going to do a lot for us. Monday’s going to be even tougher so we need to have good practices the next couple of days and come out ready to go.”
Lucht is one of the leaders of a junior class that’s on pace to go down as one of the best girls athletic classes of the century in the Daily Journal area. A Northwestern softball commit, she’s already been an all-stater at least once in basketball, volleyball, softball and track and field. But the Timberwolves are much more than their leader, with fellow hoops standout Lauryn Hamrick putting together an all-state caliber season herself to help lead one of the deepest rosters imaginable for a school with an IHSA enrollment number of 93.5.
Their test Monday comes from a St. Teresa team that took down AP No. 1 Effingham St. Anthony 45-40 in overtime in last Thursday’s Arcola Sectional championship, a game in which star guard Lucy Corley continued a senior season to remember with a 31-point explosion. The matchup between Lucht and Corley, a Samford soccer commit, will pit two of Class 1A’s premier student-athletes against one another.
The Timberwolves got to this round a year ago and even held a 39-38 fourth-quarter lead before ultimately falling by a 52-44 final to Altamont. A group that hasn’t taken any of its success for granted, expect the junior-heavy Timberwolves to come out with a senior mentality as they get a second chance at state.