Galesburg girls hoops sees what its future can be vs. senior-led Washington
· Yahoo Sports
If you were blindfolded and didn’t know where you were, but had to guess based on volume and school spirit, you might have thought you were in Cameron Indoor Stadium or Assembly Hall. That’s how vociferous the partisan home crowd was before tipoff at John Thiel Gymnasium for the Galesburg and Washington Class 3A girls basketball sectional final.
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Forty-five minutes before the game on Thursday, Feb. 26, just about all the seats on the Galesburg side were taken. A few minutes into the third quarter, however, the Silver Streaks side, once standing in rabid chanting unison, sat planted in their seats.
The Silver Streaks still received a hearty salute when the final horn sounded, but otherwise it was a tough night for the home team. Washington, using a starting five composed of four seniors, cruised to a 61-35 victory and ended the Streaks’ season at 27-5.
Galesburg’s Taylor Herchenroder only hopes she gets another chance to experience the atmosphere that surrounded this game.
“It’s once-in-a-lifetime to be on a team with this much support system,” said Herchenroder, one of three triplets on the squad. “At the end of the day, even though we lost, it was such a fun game, such a fun season.”
If the Silver Streaks were to advance, they knew they would have to contain Panthers’ senior shooting guard, Avery Tibbs. That did not happen.
Tibbs scored a game-high 27 points, and, in doing so, became Washington’s all-time leading scorer. Tibbs, who was second-team All-State last season and will play at Division II McKendree University this fall, surpassed Maggie Krick’s record of 2,091 points with a 3-point field goal late in the contest. She made the state tournament last season with the Panthers and is one win away from going again.
“When I’m old and I get to tell my kids I got to play in a state tournament, hopefully two years in a row, that would be just a feeling I would never forget,” Tibbs said. “I’m just trying to soak in every moment, because, sadly, I know it’s going to be over soon.”
Tibbs scored 10 of her team’s first 12 points and 13 of Washington’s 18 in the first quarter. The Silver Streaks could never establish their vaunted full-court press because they were too busy trying to get back after missed shots.
Washington spread the floor well offensively and kept Galesburg mostly to the perimeter in looking every bit like a team with a mostly senior starting five. The Streaks had no seniors in the starting lineup. Still, Taylor Herchenroder afterward wasn’t looking at inexperience as an excuse.
Looking ahead to next year, Herchenroder said, “We have to be a team. We can’t be one versus four, or two versus three. We have to be a team to do good things.”
The Silver Streaks were led by junior Jozalyn Kilgore’s 11 points, with sophomore Zaniyah Carter getting nine and Khloe May six. The Panthers (31-2) got 16 points from senior Daniele Guedet and eight from Kate McDougall.
For Galesburg coach Lexi Demott, she’ll remember this season’s squad as “special.”
“There’s a lot of talent here, and I’m excited to see the work they put in, in the off-season to take themselves to the next level,” Demott said. “(Washington) is a good ball club, and they’ve been playing together a really long time. When you have that chemistry, that connection, it’s going to be tough to play them. They had a 2,000-point scorer and three 1,000-point scorers. That’s a lot of points among starters on a team.”
This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Galesburg girls basketball looks to future after IHSA sectional final loss