EDWARDSVILLE – Katelyn Lehnen scored 13 points for Chatham Glenwood on the night, but her last three were the most important, as she sank a three with 22.2 seconds left in regulation to give the Titans a 43-40 win over Edwardsville in a girls basketball game played Thursday Night at Lucco-Jackson Gym.
The Tigers did have a chance to force overtime, but a three at the buzzer by Lainey McFarlin hit the rim and bounced away, giving Glenwood the win in an evenly-played game that went down to the wire.
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“Man, that was a tough one,” said Edwardsville head coach Bryan Young. “But give them credit; they came out, ready to go, fired up. And they took it to us.”
The two teams were tied after the third quarter, with Glenwood going on a 6-0 run to start out. The Tigers went on an 8-0 run to counter and take the lead, and showed a lot of resiliencies in their comeback.
“Yeah, but that’s the problem,” Young said. “I thought that’s what they were waiting for. They try to turn it on at the end. But it was good to see. It was good to see the fight in them, still, even being down in the fourth quarter. It’s good to see that fight, but I think that’s what put us in that position, trying to wait for that moment.”
Glenwood also battled throughout the game, and Young thought the Titans deserved credit as well, for the way they kept coming, and not surrendering.
“Yeah, I mean, they battled,” Young said. “Man, they came out, scrapped and fought, clawed, and did everything they could to win that game. So, give those coaches and kids a lot of credit for that.”
The Tiger defense wasn’t too shabby, forcing 22 turnovers and playing scrappy all night.
”I thought we played pretty good defense,” Young said. “Like I said, our defense was good, but we couldn’t get any flow. The flow of the game was kind of odd, but like I said, [Glenwood] had a lot to do with it. They came out, and were fighting on defense themselves. They have some pretty good defensive players. There was some switching, and they really tried to shut us down offensively.”
McFarlin was the choice to take the final shot, and it was a very good effort that just bounced away.
It took nearly three minutes for the first basket to fall, and it belonged to Glenwood’s Alexis Neumann in the lane to make it 2-0, with the quarter becoming a see-saw affair until late, when the Tigers scored the last seven points on baskets by Sophie Shapiro and Mia Semith, and a three by Ellie Neath to give Edwardsville an 11-6 lead after one.
Neumann scored the first basket of the second quarter for the Titans, and a three from Lehnen tied the game at 11-11, but a McFarlin three and. a Semith basket gave the Tigers the lead back at 16-11, which sparked a 9-0 Edwardsville run, increasing the lead to 21-12, The Titans came back to cut the lead to 21-16 at halftime.
Neumann sank a three and Ava Bobb hit a pair of free throws at the start of the second half to pull Glenwood into a 21-21 tie, with a pair of Semith free throws giving Edwardsville the lead at 23-21, The Tigers’ edge went between two and four points throughout the period, and near the end of the quarter, a three-point play by Bobb, and a free throw by Makaela Diamond tied the game at 29-29. An exchange of free throws left the score at 31-31 at three-quarter time.
At the start of the fourth quarter, baskets by Rowann Law, Makenna Yeager and Neumann gave Glenwood a 37-31 lead. The Tigers game back on an 8-0 run of their own, as Semith, Neath, Blakely Hockett and Shapiro all scored to give Edwardsville a 39-37 lead with 3:63 left. Law later scored to retie the game at 39-39, An exchange of free throws kept the game tied at 40-40, with Neumann connecting on her game-winning three with 22.2 seconds left to make the score 43-40, The Tigers got the ball back off a scramble with 0.7 seconds left, and McFarlin let loose with her shot, but it bounced off the back of the rim and fell away at the buzzer, giving the Titans the win.
Semith led Edwardsville with 14 points, while both Neath and Shapiro had nine points each, McFarlin had six points, and Hockett scored two points.
Neumann led the way for Glenwood with 15 points, while Lehnen had 13 points, both Bobb and Law had five points apiece, Yeager and Hope Gilmore had two points each, and Diamond had a single point.
The Titans are now 15-5 on the year, while Edwardsville is now 10-11, and start a five-game road trip on Tuesday at O’Fallon, then play at Belleville East on Jan. 25, both games starting at 7:30 p.m. The Tigers will also visit Civic Memorial, Collinsville and East St. Louis on the road trip, before playing two of their final three games at home.
“We’re going on the road now, for a month,” Young said. “That’ll be fun. It’ll be good for us to go do that, experience that. We’ve got a young team, and after this loss, I want to see how we’ll bounce back We’ve got O’Fallon on Tuesday, so we’re looking forward to this.”
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
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