In basketball, when push comes to shove you go to your strength. For Fremd, that means Lynell Davis down the stretch.
Davis, a 6-foot-1-inch junior center, scored just 13 points for the Vikings in their Tuesday night Mid-Suburban League crossover matchup against Rolling Meadows. But four of those came in the last 26 seconds and closed the books on Fremd’s offensive output for the evening as the Vikings struggled to a 38-35 victory.
Davis shared team-high scoring honors with Maggie Fontana and pulled down a contest-best 14 rebounds. But the Mustangs’ Jaclyn Jares almost stole the game single-handedly, scoring nine of her 20 points in the fourth quarter and 12 of the Mustangs’ final 16 points.
In the end, noted Fremd coach Carol Plodzien, it all boiled down to her team’s will to win.
“We’re really working on determination,” she said. “We need to keep control in the final two minutes, and we played right down to the final buzzer tonight.”
While Plodzien saw the glass as half full, to Rolling Meadows coach Mark Thorne the same vessel was nearer to empty.
“Fremd is an excellent team,” Thorne said. “They gave us everything we wanted. We lost our composure down the stretch, but I’m proud of the way we came back.”
Despite Davis’s Windex performance on the glass, the Mustangs (15-9) still managed to outrebound their hosts 24-23. A significant portion of that was on the offensive end of the court, where Rolling Meadows owned a hefty 15-9 advantage. Eight of those came in the first quarter, but the Mustangs were hurt by their inability to capitalize on any of those put-back opportunities.
In fact, Rolling Meadows had a hard time putting the ball in the bucket at all in the first quarter – not that the Vikings (17-9) exactly threatened to short circuit the scoreboard.
Ellen Ryan (11 points) opened the game with a three-pointer and Jares converted on a wild drive at the midway point of the period, which accounted for all of the offense for the Mustangs in the first eight minutes.
Fontana converted a three-point play to give Fremd a 7-4 lead with 2 minutes 27 seconds to play and Davis added a pair of free throws with one tick left to put the Vikes on top 9-5 after one.
After Ryan opened the second by putting back her own missed free throw, Fremd’s Jill Sobieraj drained a three-pointer to initiate a 9-2 run that gave the hosts their biggest lead of the game, 18-8, with 3:33 to play in the half. Jares scored consecutive hoops for Rolling Meadows to trim the deficit to 18-12, and it settled in at 20-13 at the break.
The Mustangs pulled within three when Ryan hit a 6-footer to make it 20-17, but another Fremd spurt, this time 8-2, helped lift the Vikings to a 30-24 lead after 24 minutes.
Things really got interesting in the fourth quarter. Jares, who scored all but two of Rolling Meadows’ 11 fourth-quarter points, kicked off the quarter with a drive and followed that with a pair from the charity stripe to cut it to 30-28.
Ericka Butler answered with a three-pointer for Fremd, but Jares stole the ball, went coast-to-coast and completed a three-point play to keep it a two-point ball game.
That’s when Davis went to work. After she hit a lone free throw, Ryan converted a breakaway layup that was started by one of Jares’ four steals and Jares swiped the ball again and went the length of the hardwood to give the Mustangs a 35-34 lead, their first since it was 5-4.
But that was the end of the line for the visitors. Davis scored deep in the paint with 27 seconds left to put Fremd back on top for good, then iced it with six seconds left with a pair of free throws after Ryan missed a 17-footer.
