Shorthanded Kaneland hatches win

Knights senior standout goes down with leg injury

MAPLE PARK -- When the best player on Kaneland's girls basketball team, four-year varsity performer Katie Hatch, went down 2:27 into a Western Sun Conference game against Yorkville on Saturday, the Knights knew they were in for a unusual night.

Hatch left the game with a calf injury, but the Knights managed to scramble to a 37-26 win for their first WSC win of the season. At times, there were three or four players on the court at the same time not playing their normal positions.

"When we lost Katie, we were kind of helter-skelter the whole night," Kaneland coach Ernie Colombe said. "We're just happy to come out with a win. We're hoping to get her back. It may have been just a cramp, we don't know right now. It made the game a lot more interesting."

That was true, particularly early. An 8-0 run early in the second quarter gave Yorkville (1-13, 0-5 WSC) a 15-8 lead. But Kaneland (4-8, 1-3) scored the final 12 points of the quarter to enter the half up 20-15 and never trailed again. Alyssa Galvan, who played a key role off the bench replacing Hatch in the post, scored six points in that run.

"(Hatch's injury) kind of brought us down in the first quarter," Kaneland senior Sara Rose said. "In the second quarter, we got more comfortable. Katie's our main player, so filling her role is hard to do."

The Foxes had a handful of chances to get back into the game in the second half. They cut the Kaneland lead to 22-19 in the third, 25-21 with the first basket of the fourth quarter and 31-26 near the end of the game, but were never able to get any closer.

"We just can't seem to keep the intensity up for any great length of time," Yorkville coach Tim Peters said. "We made three or four little runs at them. It looked like the momentum had swung back our way, but then either a turnover or quick shot instead of looking for a better shot happened."

With two games each left against powerful WSC teams Batavia and Geneva, the Knights knew they could ill afford to surrender a conference win to a struggling Yorkville team. Despite the early setback, Colombe can breathe easy and move on.

"We held them to 26 points," he said. "Anytime you do that, you've got to be pretty happy. The fact that we hung in there and got the win was nice." Girls Basketball Kaneland 37, Yorkville 26