CHERRY 67, HERITAGE CHRISTIAN 51

For the second straight Saturday a team from the Arrowhead region traveled south and took a victory from a private school in the northwest suburbs. For the second straight day a team from the Arrowhead came down and beat #8A Heritage Christian. Last Saturday and on Friday night it was Mountain Iron-Buhl coming away victorious. Today it was the #12A Cherry Tigers. It appeared from the start that the day was going to tilt to Heritage Christian. The stars were aligning. Cherry’s Kaelynn Kudis immediately picked up two fouls in the first minute of action. That was a part of the sequence where HC drew four straight fouls in their first five possessions. All four were shooting fouls. The Eagles were only able to squeeze four points out of those eight chances. While HC was going inside, Cherry was picking their shots from the outside. They knocked down three 3s on their way to 12-6 lead five minutes into the action. Kudis delivered a pair of triples. With a lead she found her way to the bench. She reappeared with 7:18 left and exited with foul number three with 6:10 left in the first half. Despite the foul situation, HC was unable to move the needle dramatically and take the lead. Another #23 (the uniform of Kudis) was doing the heavy lifting for the Eagles. Kirstin Roberts xx points first half. Still Cherry led 30-23 at the break. HC utilized their 1/3/1 half court defense and that helped cause four turnovers in five chances at the start of the second half. Soon Karlee Grondahl figured out the openings and sliced and diced her way inside to the tune of eight straight points on four straight possessions. That put the margin at 45-32. All this with Kudis resting on the bench still. Kudis did return to action with 12 minutes left and avoided any catastrophic infractions. HC made a surge cutting the deficit to five twice, the last coming at 47-42. Cherry had unlocked the mysteries of the zone defense and were able to exploit shots inside either off a drive and dish from Kudis or Grondahl or garnering second chance opportunities. Cherry secured the victory when they scored on their last eight possessions over the last four minutes.

Neither team was a top 100 team, but were close at #132 (HC) and #133 (Cherry).

	CHERRY	HERITAGE CHRISTIAN
POINTS	67	51
REBOUNDS/OFF	44/13	34/16
TURNOVERS	20	10
2FGA/%	39/53.84	45/35.55
3FGA/%	8/37.50	19/15.78
FTA/%	25/64.00	20/50.00
PP100	100.0	75.0
TOP SCORER	Jessa Schroetter 19	Kirstin Robbins 19

TRENCH PLAYER: Jessa Schroetter with 19 points, 158.3 pp100 and a 28 in the 31 Club. Schroetter went to the line the most and was the most effective at 7/8.