Lady Lancers come prepared in second game against McHenry, fall short of win
The College of Lake County women’s basketball team came in with a calculated, aggressive mindset on Tuesday, Feb. 11, for their second game against visiting team McHenry County College.
A month prior, the women experienced a devastating loss 81 - 45 against McHenry, and although Tuesdays’ match ended in a loss of 78 - 62, the team was proud of their improvement.
While McHenry led the score for the majority of the game, the Lancers started off strong, finishing the first quarter with an initial score of 23 - 20.
They began to trail behind during the second quarter and into halftime, with a 13 point gap against McHenry
Sophomore Kylah Collins from North Chicago, reflected on the second quarter and stated, “We couldn’t stop it, they just came out and kept scoring. That was our drought.”
The team regained their footing after a much-needed halftime, providing the women with an opportunity to refresh physically and mentally.
They kept McHenry on their feet in the third quarter, scoring 17 points while their opponent only scored 13, bringing the third quarter to a score of 64-54.
Ten of these points were scored by Collins, three by sophomore Camille Cuevas (Warren), and two points each by freshman Emily Etherton (Round Lake) and sophomore Taylor Feltner (Antioch).
Feltner, who took a slamming fall onto the court while attempting to block a score from McHenry in the second quarter, powered through the remainder of the game.
“For the next minute, it hurts, and then the adrenaline just takes over and it makes me want to play harder,” Feltner commented after the fall.
She went on to say how typically, falls like these can leave them shaken up, “but today I wasn’t—I was just mentally focused.”
Collins compared this game to a prior match-up against Kankakee CC in Dec. of 2019, mentioning how the Lancers trailed behind 7 points with only a minute left in the game, and ended up winning with a two point lead. “We know it’s possible to make a comeback when we’re down.”
The women brought the same energy into the fourth and final quarter. Only a minute before the final buzzer, the Lancers were down by twelve points but refused to be discouraged by the score.
In the last thirty seconds, McHenry scored the last basket, finalizing the losing score of 78 - 62.
“We went into this game knowing who their players were, knowing that they only had two main players, so we tried to double-team one and that started to shut down the other,” Feltner commented.
Feltner continued to say, “I felt that we had confidence going in because we didn’t want to take them lightly. We knew where they were strong and we tried to do the best we could.”
The women’s basketball team will take on Morton College in a home game on February 18th, marking the last game of the season.
Even though time together as a team is running out, the Lancers plan to rally around each other.
Their coach, John Bongiorno will have a final practice for the women in order to finish out the season strong and hopefully improve on their current record of 16 - 11.