On Friday, Dec. 13, the Naperville North varsity girls basketball team faced the Naperville Central Redhawks at home and suffered a tough loss.
The Huskies (5-4) fell to the Redhawks (5-6) with a final score of 45-42.
Both teams had a slow start to the game until the Huskies began to find a rhythm with junior guard Natalie Frempong (1), scoring the first basket of the night on a 3-point shot. The Huskies continued to show physicality through the first quarter, fouling the Redhawks multiple times and playing stout defense. Quickly, the Redhawks started to gain some momentum in their direction with multiple defensive stops and scores. The game remained close for the rest of the half, with a strong from Frempong, the scoring leader for the Huskies with 13 points. The Redhawks still stayed in the game, with the score being 23-19 Huskies going into halftime. Frempong speaks on the Huskies aggressive first half.
“We knew that we had to be physical the whole time…the first three quarters was probably our best basketball yet. We were playing for each other,” Frempong said.
In the beginning of the second half, the Redhawks started with possession but quickly turned it over to the Huskies, leading to the first score of the second half going in the Huskies direction. The Redhawks continued to struggle, missing multiple shots and failing to get rebounds. Senior forward Jackie Yang (20) contributed with a score following a physical rebound. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Huskies started to take over the game and severely widened the lead. Yet the Redhawks did just enough to stay in the game, tying it with a minute left. The Huskies were able to take back the lead, forcing a turnover with 5.8 seconds left in the game, but the Redhawks quickly intercepted the inbound from the Huskies and scored a buzzer beater to win. Jackie Yang elaborates on how she felt the team played overall.
“I try not to sulk on the very end, you can say it’s luck but at the same time we can’t be giving them opportunities to win a close game like that, so I want to be focusing on stuff we could’ve fixed throughout the whole game,” Yang said.
Despite the disappointing result, the Huskies feel like they played some of their best basketball all year. Head Coach Aly Miller speaks on the result.
“Obviously we’ve been preaching we gotta do a better job on the boards leading up to this, and I think we did a really good job with that for three and a half quarters…We live to see another day, can’t hang our shoulders on this one and we just gotta bounce back and be ready for two big games next week,” Miller said.
The Huskies’ next game is on Thursday, Dec. 19 at home against Metea Valley High School at 4:30 P.M.
