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Sports
Holiday blues : Sports : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisHoliday blues
| Lineup struggles against Aubrn, but Oswego East girls recover in finale
| by Mike Slodki
| 11/29/2012
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The Oswego East girls basketball team will gladly take the ending to its Thanksgiving tournament, rather than the next-to-last encounter.
Riddled with turnovers and an inability to completely power past a consistent lead, the Lady Wolves were defeated by the Lady Knights from Rockford Auburn in a 50-40 encounter out at Benet Academy in Lisle on Saturday afternoon as part of Naperville Central's Tip-off Tournament.
Oswego East recovered during Saturday's action at the host school with a 49-41 triumph over the Bartlett Lady Hawks.
Oswego East sits at 2-4 through the first six skirmishes of the 2012-13 campaign.
Naperville Central went undefeated in the tournament and came away with a first-place nod after a 61-54 win over Metea Valley on Saturday.
In the loss against Rockford Auburn, junior guard Venita Parsons had 12 points to lead the club, followed by junior forward Sonia Lewis with eight points. Senior forward Brittany McWaine had eight points and eight boards.
Rockford Auburn was 10-for-13 from the foul line, while the Lady Wolves were 8-for-11 from the charity stripe.
RA took an early 7-0 lead as OE missed its first six shot attempts until LeRoyia Campbell's lay-up and a Parsons jumper made it 7-4 with 2:15 remaining in the first quarter. Down by six, Alex Wagner's basket and a Lewis shot closed the first-frame scoring at 10-8 with 50.6 seconds remaining.
Rockford Auburn's wire-to-wire lead was cut to 17-16 with 3:13 left on a Toni Robinson basket and a Parsons shot with 2:24 to make it 21-18, but the Lady Knights stormed out with the half's last seven points for a 28-18 halftime lead.
McWaine's bucket and a Parsons trey cut the lead to 28-23 just 46 seconds into the third quarter, but three missed shots in a row led to a 10-1 stretch for the Rockford adversary, making it 38-24 with 2:02 to go in the third.
LaNisha Cruickshank capitalized on a shot opportunity and Campbell had two foul shots to cut it to 38-28 with 48 seconds to go. The Lady Knights made good on their last two shot attempts for a 42-28 lead at the end of the third.
Oswego East's last chance for a run came in the fourth when Parsons' trifecta and two-point basket followed by two McWaine free throws closed it to 42-35 with 5:21 to go. Rockford Auburn went physical and inside go make eight of 11 free throws to push the deficit into unmanageable territory for the rest of the game.
Oswego East head coach Abe Carretto admired the tenacity of his team, which will go nicely with reduced errors and traveling violations.
"It was pretty tough. We had a lot of turnovers and travel calls which made it difficult," Carretto said. "When we got to seven, I thought we were doing real well and it seemed like we would get our hands on the ball but we wouldn't keep possession of it."
Against Bartlett, Parsons' 17 led the way, followed by Campbell's 15 and McWaine's 10.
On Tuesday, Oswego East opened Southwest Prairie Conference play with a 42-40 loss to Minooka. The Wolves led 28-19 at halftime, but the Indians cut their deficit in the third quarter and with 15 seconds remaining in the game hit a three-pointer to lead by two.
Parsons led the Wolves with 15 points while McWaine had a team-best 11 rebounds and junior Julianna Wadsworth came off the bench to finish with eight rebounds. Campbell scored eight.
The group has chance to climb and surpass .500 with a clash against Plainfield East at home on Friday in the Southwest Prairie Conference opener at 6:30 p.m.
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