Metea Valley and Romeoville entering the playoffs as the 16th and 18th seeds respectively. The Spartans beating the Mustangs in the regular season but Metea didn’t have Tess Thompson on hand.
After giving up the opening basket, Romeoville comes down and sends a skip pass to Lindsay Novak, nothing but twine. Spartans up 3-2.
Metea’s Chloe Kurkjian also using a cross court pass to find Paige Buranosky, who takes it hard to the baseline and lays it in, recapturing the lead.
Mustangs making a concerted effort on defense to force turnovers. And Jordan Wingham doing just that, gets the strip and score, putting the Mustangs up 16-3 with 7 to go in the first half.
And to make matters worse for the Spartans, Wingham gets the feed from Katie Flanders, bouncing into a three. Metea going on a 17-0 run.
Romeoville trying to combat the momentum swing. Savannah Anderson taking the jumper from the elbow to pull to within 14 with a minute to go in the half
Jumping to the third quarter and following a miss, the Mustangs go on a stampede. Wingham throws it ahead to Raniyah Naylor, who connects with Thompson for the layup. MV firing on all cylinders to take a 28-9 lead midway through the third.
But they aren’t done. Sophomore Jada Samuel getting in on the act – she hits back to back threes to close out the quarter. Metea up 34-14 going to the fourth.
And they never look back. Wingham drives and bounces it to Kurkjian and she lays it in. Kurkjian ties with Samuel for a game-high nine points as Metea advances to take on 2 seed Oswego.