WHITING | After a tough overtime loss against Bishop Noll on Saturday night, the Whiting girls basketball team wanted to get back out on the court in its Greater South Shore Conference tournament opener against River Forest.
Times No. 3 Whiting, though, needed 16 minutes of warmup before finally dispatching the Ingots 64-11.
“It was really important to get out here again and kind of shake things off a little,” Whiting coach Kevin Moynihan said. “We just didn't get going until the second half.”
Credit junior point guard Citali Lopez for that. She finished with 15 points, nine steals and eight assists, setting up the Oilers (15-2) with a Thursday night semifinal against the Lake Station-Marquette winner.
The Oilers will need one more win to have a chance for revenge against Noll in Saturday's GSSC tourney championship.
“We didn't start very well,” Lopez said. “We were nervous, a little down maybe. But we finally started to fight for what we wanted. We really want to get our game going.
“We had to step up and we did that in that second half.”
Bri Blackwell, despite a cold shooting night, also scored 15 against the Ingots (1-15). Alex Danielides scored 14 points and grabbed 12 rebounds.
“(Lopez) is definitely our defensive leader,” Moynihan said. “She gave us a spark.”
In the boys game, River Forest was coming off a spanking by Noll on Friday. In a much-less resounding way, the Ingots got a chance to move on with a 51-48 win over the Ingots.
River Forest (6-5) advances to play the Lake Station-Marquette winner on Friday.
Brandon Laas led the Ingots with 17 points while JJ Pennington scored 13. But River was 16-of-36 from the free throw line.
“I know what we're going to be working on this week,” River Forest coach Jason Quigg said. “It's so bad I don't even know the percentage for that. On Friday night after the Noll game the guys said, “We're going to learn from this and I think that's what we did.”
Whiting (1-11) was led by Nick Filipek's 15 points.
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