Skyhawks’ state dream comes to end

Johnburg's Megan Lopez watches from the bench during the final seconds of Monday's supersectional game at Elgin High School. Oswego won, 51-48. (Travis Haughton - thaughton@nwherald.com)

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ELGIN – With every second that ticked off the clock, another Johnsburg girls basketball player put her head in her hands.

The tears started to flow at the 8-second mark in the fourth quarter. Time was expiring on the season filled with more expectations than any other, the season the Skyhawks considered the one in which their state final dreams would come true.

Instead, the season ended in the same painful fashion as the two preceding it. Johnsburg lost to Oswego on Monday, 51-48, in the IHSA Class 3A Elgin Supersectional to snuff out a goal the team had chased for three years.

Losing two consecutive supersectionals hurt. But falling a third time was brutal.

“Terrible,” Johnsburg coach Mike Toussaint said. “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.”

Senior point guard Megan Lopez struggled against her emotions, trying adequately to describe the anguish and the disappointment.

“To get this close again and not get it, it’s so hard,” Lopez said. “I don’t have another year, I don’t have a backup year left, I don’t have anything. It’s over.”

Johnsburg junior guard Melissa Dixon, who led all scorers with 25 points, wiped her eyes as she tried to pinpoint what exactly went awry.

“I think we were planning to come out stronger, and we didn’t,” Dixon said. “We were prepared for this game, but we weren’t prepared for how strong Oswego came out.”

The quick start the Skyhawks (25-10) had was not quick enough. Johnsburg led 6-2 at the 4:32 mark in the first quarter, but were outscored 9-4 to trail by one, 11-10, at the end of the quarter.

Oswego (29-2) led by as much as 10, 22-12, in the second quarter before Johnsburg staged its first big run of the game. The Skyhawks closed the first half and opened the third quarter on a 16-2 run that gave them a four-point cushion, 28-24, with 4:22 left in the third.

Lopez hit a three-pointer at the buzzer to cap the first half and cut Oswego’s lead to two, 22-20. Then Dixon scored four points, Lopez added two more and senior forward Danielle Slivka hit a putback to help the Skyhawks lead again in the third.

“At halftime we realized we couldn’t be nervous anymore,” Lopez said. “We’re a running team. We had to do that to keep going.”

In a game defined by runs, though, the Skyhawks couldn’t sustain theirs.

Oswego closed the third quarter ahead by two, 36-34, thanks to a 12-6 spurt.

“It went back and forth,” Dixon said. “When we were making runs it gave us confidence, but then they would make a run and everyone’s foul trouble didn’t help.”

Slivka, who averaged 14.5 points a game, was held to six points and fouled out with 3:38 left in the fourth quarter. Lopez, also hampered by fouls, fouled out with eight seconds left in the game.

Despite the score constantly swinging, Johnsburg looked in control down the stretch in the fourth quarter. Dixon opened the fourth with back-to-back three-pointers to make it 40-36 and when Oswego knotted the score at 40, junior Mary Kate Wright scored a putback to make it 42-40 with 4:20 left in the game.

Oswego took another small lead, 44-42, with 2:43 left to play, but another Dixon three-pointer and a free throw gave Johnsburg a 46-44 advantage with 2:10 left.

Oswego then outscored the Skyhawks 7-2 to put the game away.

“We just didn’t play our best game,” senior forward Krista Volden said. “That surprised me. ... We didn’t play like we had all the experience and that was disappointing.”

Panthers forward Paige Harmon exploited the Skyhawks down low for 16 points and 19 rebounds. Toussaint had preached about the Panthers’ interior game all weekend, so to see it haunt his team was difficult.

“I didn’t think we made good decisions,” Toussaint said. “The experience on this team sometimes showed tonight and other times it didn’t.

“This is a great team, but this was a very disappointing game.”