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Basketball returned to A.J. Sellett Gymnasium on Wednesday after a COVID-19 pause with an Interstate Eight Conference girls/boys doubleheader.
Host La Salle-Peru routed Plano, 54-24, in the opener before the Cavalier boys came up just short in a 52-49 loss to the Reapers.
“It feels great [to be playing again],” L-P junior Taylor Martyn said. “I think [the pause] was a week. It felt like a long time. We all knew it was going to be kind of iffy because we hadn’t had practice, but playing as a team and everybody playing together, it all worked out.”
GIRLS
La Salle-Peru 54, Plano 24
Playing for the second night in a row after a win Tuesday at Morris, against a team they’ve already beaten handily twice, the Cavaliers started slow.
“It looked like we were on a bus for the first five or six minutes,” L-P coach Hollis Vickery said. “I told the girls it looked like we were swimming in Jello. We didn’t hit some wide open shots like we usually do. If we hit just half of those, it’s not even close (early). We took a long time to get going. Part of it is I think they knew we were a superior team, but you can’t play like that. That 8-0 start, sometimes it takes forever to get out of that. We couldn’t get into a rhythm. We really looked bad on defense. We weren’t aggressive. If you’re aggressive on defense, it’s going to carry over to the offense. When we picked it up on defense, we got going.”
Despite the slow start, L-P led 10-8 after the first quarter and 16-12 midway though the second before starting to pull away.
The Cavs held the Reapers to only one point over the final 3:27 of the first half.
Meanwhile, L-P scored 11 points during the stretch, including 3-pointers by Avah Moriarty and Brooklyn Ficek and four points by Bailey Pode, to take a 27-13 lead at halftime.
The Cavs extended their lead to 40-22 by the end of the third quarter before outscoring the Reapers, 14-2, in the final eight minutes.
Ficek led L-P (14-3, 5-1 I8) with 15 points, Martyn scored eight points, and Avery Urbanski added seven points.
L-P has two more games this week – at home Friday against Kaneland and at Prairie Central on Saturday.
“It’s going to be tough,” Martyn said. “It’s tough already on us. We’re all tired, but we know if we keep our heads in it we’re going to be fine.”
BOYS BASKETBALL
Plano 52, La Salle-Peru 49
L-P coach Jim Cherveny had a premonition Tuesday that the Cavs’ first game since Jan. 4 would come down to a last-second shot.
He even had the play picked out before the game.
Cherveny was right.
Inbounding under the Plano basket with 1.7 seconds left, the Cavs ran the play and John Riva got a half-court shot off but it missed.
“I had a feeling last night it was going to come down to that,” Cherveny said. “I just didn’t think we had enough in the tank yet to really pull away at any point. I was thinking last night if they play the 1-2-2 [zone] on a last second shot what we were going to run. We ran it. We got Johnny the look we wanted. It’s a tough, long shot, but he got a clean look, so we executed what we wanted to do.”
L-P trailed by four entering the fourth quarter, but opened the fourth on a 7-2 run, taking a 42-41 lead on a Riva bucket with 4:38 left.
The Reapers responded by forcing three consecutive turnovers that led to transition baskets to retake the lead at 47-42 with 3:24 left.
Sean Whitfield drained a 3-pointer, and Riva hit a pair of free throws with 17.7 seconds left to make it 52-47.
After missing a 3 on L-P’s next possession, Riva stole the rebound from Carion Hale and laid it in to cut the deficit to 52-49 with 3.2 seconds left.
Plano missed two free throws with 2 seconds left to give L-P one last chance.
“I thought we played with a great sense of urgency,” Cherveny said. “We have some guys who have a never give up, never die attitude. We try to represent our school and community with pride. We kept playing hard. We got some deflections and got some big rebounds.”
L-P started strong, scoring the first five points and leading 11-3 before holding a 13-10 lead after the first quarter.
Plano led 24-23 at halftime.
“I thought we came out very strong,” Cherveny said. “We came out with great effort and great intensity, but by the middle to end of the second quarter it was very obvious we had pretty much 12 days off. We were fatigued, I was very happy with our effort. We executed to the best of our ability tonight.”
Riva scored 21 points to lead L-P (9-8, 3-2 I8), while Josh Senica had a double-double with 10 points and 12 rebounds.
L-P plays at Ottawa on Friday and at home against Kaneland on Saturday.
“This is a tough week for us,” Cherveny said. “We’re going to come back to practice [Thursday], make sure we’re healthy and fresh, get our legs underneath us, get some shots up and prepare for Friday. We’ll see what happens. We have to keep positive and optimistic.”