This week's Class 3A Peoria Sectional at Bradley's Renaissance Center sees two interesting and somewhat surprising match ups. The Sectional title should be up for grabs.
Tuesday's game has Mendota facing Limestone. Both teams surprised the pundits by getting out of their regionals as Mendota upset both Rock Falls and LaSalle-Peru at Rock Falls and Limestone dashed third ranked Washington's hopes at East Peoria. Wednesday's game also has two teams getting here via the upset route as Galesburg knocked off Quincy Notre Dame at its own regional and will face Central, defending state champs, who upset Metamora at Chillicothe. One would be hard pressed to pick a favorite out of these equally matched teams. All this should equate to exciting tournament basketball this week in Peoria.
The Argo Sectional up north in Class 4A merits some mention as it is as loaded as a Sectional could be. On Tuesday, upstart DuSable, coming off a last second upset of St. Rita, squares off against state and nationally ranked Simeon. Then, on Wednesday, Whitney Young, top ranked in the state and ranked nationally as well, faces state ranked Curie and it's young star, big Cliff Alexander. (www.csnchicago.com)
In girls action, Quincy Notre Dame won the Class 3A title Saturday night over Vernon Hills and became the first team to win back to back titles in different classes. In fact, it was QND's third straight state title and 53rd consecutive win overall.
In a very exciting and well played Class 4A finale, Marian Catholic's Kauai Bradley put in a rebound basket with under one second left to give her team the title over Rolling Meadows, 48-47. This was one of those games that neither team deserved to lose.
Lastly, of interest to fans of the Richwoods Knights, both the girls basketball and boys football teams lost to the eventual state champion in their respective tournament runs. Marian Catholic beat the girls last Monday night and Crete-Monee (Class 6A football champs) defeated the Knights last November. Getting past Richwoods seems to portend good things ahead in tournament play this year !
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