Lasers finish strong in battle of top teams
Based on what Kettle Moraine showed Tuesday night, it is ready for the challenges ahead.
The Lasers’ girls basketball team, ranked among the best in the state all season and at the top of the Journal Sentinel area rankings for all but a couple of weeks, is in the midst of the toughest part of its schedule.
Two of its next four opponents, Arrowhead and Brookfield East, are ranked in the Associated Press and wissports.net coaches Division 1 state polls. Another, Catholic Memorial, is ranked in the Division 3 top 10.
They’re the kind of opponents good enough to push the Lasers to their limit.
That was the case Tuesday night when Kettle Moraine, the area’s secondranked team, scored a 74-67 victory over No. 1 Pewaukee in which the Lasers controlled the game throughout the first half and, after some shaky moments in the second, finished strong.
“We didn’t wilt,” Kettle Moraine coach
Todd Hansen said. “We showed the heart of a champion.”
Junior wing Grace Grocholski, an Arizona State recruit, finished with 25 points for Kettle Moraine. Senior guard Lily Randgaard, who signed with Western Illinois, added 19 and junior guard Braelyn Torres finished with 13.
The three helped Kettle Moraine overcome a stretch during the first 9-plus minutes of the second half when Pewaukee erased a 12-point halftime deficit with a 30-14 run. The Lasers, who led by as many as 13 in the first half, found themselves down by four with about 9 minutes to play.
They haven’t been in that situation often this season.
“Our juniors and seniors really stepped up. They understood,” Hansen said. “There were some timeouts and they were looking right at me. There wasn’t fear in their eyes. You could tell they were still confident.”
A 9-2 run over the next 41⁄2 minutes allowed Kettle Moraine to regain control. With a four-point lead and 2 minutes to play, the Lasers were in position to spread the floor, draw fouls and go to the free throw line, where they went 6 for 6 during the final 64 seconds.
The game was Kettle Moraine’s first test since a last-second lost to New Berlin Eisenhower on Jan. 10. The Lasers, who trailed by 10 at halftime of that game, started hot Tuesday. They played with a sense of urgency that led to a 15-5 run midway through the first half and a 28-15 lead with 71⁄2 minutes to play.
“We wanted to rebound well,” Grocholski said. “We had a game against Muskego (Thursday) and we rebounded well (in) that one. Coming out against another one-loss team, we wanted to just bring it at them.”
Pewaukee, which beat Kettle Moraine by eight points last season, would have had more of a hill to climb in the second half were it not for Amy Terrian, who had 17 of her 30 points in the first half.