Lady Trevians Advance to Regional Finals

If defense wins championships, then New Trier looks to be in pretty good shape come Thursday night.

The Trevians (17-11) hounded Maine West (11-15) defensively, allowing only 10 first-half points, and cruising to a 59-29 victory over the Warriors in the IHSA Class 4A Niles West regional semi-finals.

New Trier, the No. 5 seed in the Maine East Sectional, will face Niles West, the section’s No. 3 seed, on Thursday night for a chance to win a regional championship for the second time in three years.

New Trier raced out to a 12-0 lead only four minutes in thanks to a defense that forced seven first-quarter turnovers. Maine West missed its first six shots from the field before Stephanie O’Neil hit a three-pointer from the left corner to put the Warriors on the scoreboard with 1:39 left in the first quarter.

“They were bad shots and there were turnovers,” Maine West coach Derril Kipp said. “We couldn’t get behind against this team.”

After the Trevians scored eight straight points, Maine West finally started to put together good offensive possessions. Amanda Hoye dribbled left and hit a running jumper off the glass and on the ensuing possession Brittany Collins was fouled after converting a layup inside. The Warriors got a defensive stop and Collins scored on a putback after rebounding her own miss.

“The defense was fine, it was the rebounding,” New Trier coach Teri Rodgers said in explaining why she called timeout. “We turned it around and we did a better job. It was just a little bit of a lack of focus there for a couple minutes.”

New Trier allowed only one point for the rest of the half and the offense continued to push the pace in transition off of Maine West’s turnovers and missed shots.

Freshman guard Alexa Czyzynski fed a nice entry pass inside to Maggie Lyon for an easy layup, and senior Abbey Schmitt hit two consecutive turnaround jumpers late in the second quarter to give the Trevians a 25-point lead at halftime.  

New Trier’s defense focused on limiting the touches of Collins inside and stopping dribble penetration from Hoye. For the game, New Trier held Collins to only 10 points on 5-for-9 shooting and Hoye had nine points for Maine West.

“I figured being physical with [Collins] would probably slow down a lot of her ability in the post especially because she’s not as rough a player as I am for what we’ve seen before,” sophomore forward Colleen McConnell said.

Lyon led New Trier with 16 points and had one of her better shooting nights from the floor.   

New Trier’s defense was sharp on Tuesday night, but it will have its hands full facing Jewell Loyd and Niles West. The Trevians split two regular-season meetings with Niles West, but won their last matchup, 60-54.

“We need to concentrate on Jewell Loyd because she’s a really amazing player for high school obviously,” McConnell said. “We just need to work on cutting off the head of the monster because without her they kind of fall apart because she’s a good leader emotionally and on the court.”