PEKIN — Columbus East girls basketball coach Danny Brown said Saturday night’s game at Class 2A No. 8 Eastern (Pekin) was best defensive effort his team has had all year.
Whether it was the Olympians matchup zone or the half-court press, it was effective. They held the Musketeers in check offensively, and that helped fuel East to a 39-27 victory.
Eastern, the 2017 state champion in 2A, came into the game averaging almost 50 points per game.
“Everybody played great defense tonight,” Brown said. “That was a good team they just beat out there tonight on their home floor.”
The Olympians (7-6) pushed out to a 6-0 lead early in the game before the Musketeers (10-3) were able to score halfway through the first quarter. Later in the period, Koryn Greiwe sank two free throws to give East a 8-5 lead after one quarter.
To start the second quarter, Whitley Rankin made a drive to the basket to extend the Olympian lead to 10-5. East then had a scoring drought, but its defense stood strong to prevent Eastern from going on a run. Leading 10-9, Greiwe ended the drought with a layup just before the buzzer to put East ahead 12-9 at halftime.
“Zone defense is something we’ve gone back to multiple times,” East junior Olivia Linnemann said. “We’ve worked really hard on it and went over it a bunch of times (in practice). I think we were so used to playing it, it felt like second nature, and it fell into place.”
The Olympians started the second half on a 9-3 run to extend the lead to 21-12. After a putback from the Musketeers, East answered back with a Megan Vetter post-up shot in the paint to make it 23-14.
With about 30 seconds left in the third quarter, Linnemann converted a three-point-play to give the Olympians a 26-18 heading into the final period.
Eastern hit a couple of 3-pointers to cut it to 30-24 midway through the fourth, but the free-throw shooting of East sealed the win. The Olympians finished 16-of-19 shooting from the charity stripe.
Greiwe finished with a game-high 16 points and went 9 of 10 from the line. Claire Cunningham added 10 points.
“We probably shouldn’t have changed defenses, but we did to try to create some offense for us in the second half, even though we gave up nine, but it worked, too,” Brown said. “We didn’t execute offensively in the first half, but in the second half, we did. Once we got the lead we knew we could hang on, and we hit our free throws.”
Vetter made her first varsity start Saturday after coming off the bench during Friday’s win at Franklin County. She and Linnemann combined to score 10 points.
“We’re trying to find out that little bit of offense and defense to compensate for with Sarah Park being out,” Brown said. “I think we found it tonight with the combination of Megan and Olivia.”
