Lady Dragons fall in regional final
The Pekin girls basketball team overcame a tough night at the free-throw line to nearly upset No.2-seed Bradley-Bourbonnais in the IHSA Class 4A Normal West Regional final Friday night, before falling 66-49.
Despite shooting 3 of 12 from the free-throw line in the first half, the Dragons used a barrage of 3-pointers to put the Boilers on their heels.
The Dragons trailed 31-25 at halftime but used an 8-2 third-quarter run to tie the game with 6:05 left in the third quarter.
Pekin’s Sydney Diekhoff scored three the old fashioned way, scoring and knocking down a free throw. Kennedy Pollman knocked down a 3-pointer and a midrange shot to tie the game for the Dragons.
“I thought we were pretty good coming out in the third quarter, tied it up,” Pekin head coach Becky Fulkerson said, “It was exciting. Then all of a sudden a possession got away, then another got away, then they scored. We weren’t converting on (offense).”
The game went downhill when the Boilers went on a 10-1 run during a two-minute span in the third quarter, powered by a pair of 3-pointers by Kennedy Weigt, to pull away from the Dragons.
“We left some people open that we should’t have,” Fulkerson said. “They just kept hitting the three. It was kind of killer, but we weren’t really getting what we wanted offensively.”
Diekhoff converted on five 3-pointers for the Dragons on her way to 23 points in the game. Diekhoff scored the first six Dragon points of the night and 16 of Pekin’s 25 first-half points.
“(Diekhoff) is a really good player,” Bradley-Bourbonnais head coach Evan Tingley said. “In the half-court we just have to know where she’s at at all times. We were really concerned with (Diekhoff) and (Alexus Mercer), we thought if we knew where they were at all times it would help us out defensively.”
Mercer played sparingly in the first half after collecting two fouls in the first quarter. Mercer battled in the post with 5-foot-11 sophomore Mikayla Brandon, who finished with 22 points for Bradley-Bourbonnais.
“They’re a good team. They didn’t get their record because they’re an easy team to play,” Fulkerson said. “They’ve got a solid group on the floor and they shut down our inside game.”
Weight scored 16 points for the Boilers and Jasmine Elliot scored 14 points.
Fulkerson said the Dragons were able to hang close in the first half despite Mercer’s foul trouble. Haley Peterson scored all six of her points for Pekin in the first half.
The Boilers used a press to hound the Dragons in the backcourt for the entire game. The Dragons battled through the press in the first half, Tingley credits the press to slowing the Dragons in the second half.
“We’ve done that a few times where it’s been close throughout the first half, then midway through the third quarter and the fourth we start to kind of figure things out with the press and I thought that was the case tonight,” Tingley said.
Pekin ended the third quarter trailing 49-37 and would not get closer than 11 points in the fourth quarter.
Pollman finished the game with nine points.