Fourth Quarter Comeback Lifts ETHS Girls

The odds were stacked against the Evanston girls basketball team at the end of the semester Friday night.

The Wildkits had to tackle three days of semester exams while also dealing with a strain of the flu that ran through an already depleted roster this week.

And with point guard Ella Martin still ailing and only able to play a couple of minutes, Evanston couldn’t take care of the basketball, turning the ball over 21 times and trailing Glenbrook South 40-35 after three quarters Friday at Beardsley Gym.

But Payton King and Charity Bryant stepped up and delivered another Central Suburban League South division victory for the league leaders. The pair combined for 16 points in the fourth quarter of an improbable 53-51 triumph and boosted the Kits to 4-0 in league play.

Evanston will host a crossover contest with Maine East Saturday at noon after improving to 5-4 overall on the season.

Bryant, who led all scorers with 25 points, sank a free throw with four seconds remaining on the clock and Wildkit fans held their breath until they saw that a 3-point attempt by South’s Niki Davorija fell short of the rim as time ran out.

The gutsy performance certainly impressed ETHS head coach Brittanny Johnson.

“Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong for us --- except in the fourth quarter,” Johnson said. “We had people who had to play a lot of extra minutes and we found some toughness tonight, something we didn’t have the first couple of weeks of the season.

“We went to a zone in the fourth quarter just to give some of them some rest, and I don’t think Glenbrook South was prepared for that. We got some rest when we did that, got some really key stops, and we were able to finish strong.”

GBS (8-4 overall, 2-2 CSL South) went scoreless on offense for a 3-minute stretch in the fourth quarter as ETHS climbed back into the lead. The host team rattled off 10 unanswered points to take the lead at 48-42 on a pair of free throws by King (18 points, 10 rebounds).

The Titans fought back to within 49-47 and had a chance to tie the contest with 2:29 remaining in regulation. But Davorija clanked a pair of free throw tries and Evanston responded with a triple from the left corner by Bryant to give the winners just enough breathing room down the stretch.

South was paced by transfer Norah Rodgers, who is the daughter of former New Trier coach Teri Rodgers and netted 21 points over the last three quarters coming off the bench. The losers only shot 4-of-13 from the field in the final period.

Bryant, a do-it-all sophomore standout, limited Davorija to just six points on the night.

“That’s the first time Charity’s had to match up with the other team’s best player, and she did a great job against her,” said Johnson. “And at halftime I told Payton she wasn’t going to come out of the game (for a rest), so she had to really lock in. We really missed Payton last year (due to a succession of injuries) and now teams are not able to pressure us because she’s playing so well.

“I also thought Simone (freshman forward Simone Hewitt, who finished with 2 points and 11 rebounds) had some massive rebounds and changed up (altered) a lot of their shots in the lane. She was very solid for us tonight.

“We’re forming into a team now that people are starting to respect.”

Evanston led 12-10 at the first quarter stop, but the Titans scored 12 points in the last three minutes of the second quarter to lead 27-25 at the intermission on a 3-point bucket by Taylor Binney just before the buzzer.