When you host a tournament, you want to make it a party.

It proved to be a birthday party for Bureau Valley senior Maddie Wetzell and the Storm Wednesday in the Bureau Valley Thanksgiving girls basketball tournament.

The Storm scored the first 12 points of the game and led as much as 23 points in the third quarter on the way to a 47-39 win over Erie-Prophetstown at the Storm Cellar.

“It’s tough playing back-to-back nights. You don’t get a practice to prepare, just go out there and play,” said BV coach Jon Henegar, whose team beat Rock Falls 60-27 on Tuesday. And I thought we came out and did a great job coming out and playing all four quarters. Made some mistakes along the way, but that’s going to happen. Game 2 of the year. We played through a lot of the mistakes.”

Wetzell said it all made for a good 18th birthday.

“It’s great because I’m with my teammates who also just happen to be with my best friends. It’s a great way to celebrate,” she said. “It means a lot (to make the finals) because we’re such a young team and we’re all back. I’m just excited to see where we can go and going 2-0 early in the season is a great accomplishment.”

The Storm (2-0) will now face Riverdale for the championship at 7 p.m. Friday. The Rams beat Rock Falls 49-25 in Wednesday’s opener to also improve to 2-0.

“Riverdale’s a really good team,” Henegar said. “I know they have a lot of girls just getting back from volleyball (state tournament), haven’t had a lot of practice but they play fullcourt. Get up and guard. Play transition. A lot of things we like to do. Should be a fun game and good test for us early in the year.”

Bureau Valley came out red hot with Libby Endress hitting a 3 to start the game. Sophomore center Brynley Doty ran the floor and scored twice on the break before classmate Brooke Helms hit a 3 and then passed to Endress on another runout to run the Storm lead to 12-0.

The Panthers were shut out until Aubrey Huisman hit the first of her two straight baskets at the 3:25 mark. Lauren Abbott beat the buzzer for a 3-pointer to draw the Panthers within 16-7 at the end of the first.

The hot shooting Helms, the Storm’s point guard, hit her third 3 of the half and dished to Doty again on the break to close out a 26-12 Storm halftime lead.

“We didn’t shoot the ball well last night and I told the girls we’ve just got to keep playing with confidence,“ Henegar said. ”We had a really good couple weeks of practice. Shot really well and moving the ball well and all these things and the first night we had first-night jitters and struggled a little bit.

“I said go out there and have confidence and knock down some shots and they did.”

The Storm picked up where they left off to start the second half with Emily Wright scoring a quick hoop, followed by a steal and layup by Endress. Endress scored twice more and Doty added a pair of hoops to give the Storm a 38-15 lead, their largest margin of the night.

E-P used a 10-0 run to close out the third quarter at 38-25. The Panthers outscored their hosts 8-3 in the final three minutes to work their final deficit to nine points.

E-P coach Chris Brown was pleased how the Panthers, who fell to Riverdale 43-37 on Tuesday, finished out.

“Bureau Valley does some good things. Coach has them playing well,” he said. “I knew it’d be a challenge on short rest. We didn’t particularly shoot the ball very well and turned it over at times.

“I think it’s a good game for us to play because we’ll learn a lot from this and move forward. Yeah, I was happy we fought back. I thought we played a pretty good fourth quarter, so that made it a little bit more respectable. The first three quarters I was pretty disappointed in our effort. Hats off to Bureau Valley. They deserve that win tonight.”

Doty finished with a team-high 12 points with Endress and Helms adding 11 each.

Huisman and Abbott each tossed in 14 points for E-P.

E/P won the JV game over BV 27-22.

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Bureau Valley's Kadyn Haage eyes the hoop as Erie-Prophetstown's Lauren punke and Lauren Abbott defend during the Thanksgiving Tournament on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025 at Bureau Valley High School. (Scott Anderson)