INA, ILL. – The Wabash Valley Lady Warriors steamrolled their way into the championship game of the NJCAA Midwest District tournament on Thursday night with an 89-62 victory over Olney Central.
The top-seeded Warriors will play Rend Lake in the championship game on Friday at 5 p.m. Rend Lake (18-14) upset No. 2 seed Vincennes, 86-82 in the other semi-final game.
WVC (29-2) jumped to a 14-0 lead over Olney Central (18-14) and did not look back. At one point late in the game, the Lady Warriors had amassed a 44-point lead, before the Knights surged late to account for the final margin of 27 points.
"It was a good win for us," said Wabash Valley head coach Lacey Shalenko, recently chosen as the Great Rivers Athletic Conference Coach-of-the-Year. "It's tough to beat people three times, and I thought we started the game with good intensity on both ends of the floor."
In the second half, the Lady Warriors dialed back the defensive intensity, and even began to rest some players in advance of the championship game, to be played in less than 24 hours.
"(Friday) will be our third game this week, and playing back-to-back is tough," Shalenko said. "I want to have all those kids available to play as many minutes as we need them to."
Mo Pruitt, coming off a 28-point performance in the quarterfinal round game on Tuesday, led the Lady Warriors on Thursday with 26 points and her third double-double in a row. Krisen Hunt added 21 points, followed by Jazmyn Turner with 12, newest 1,000-Point clubber Keya Patton with 11 and Jordan Aikens with 10.
Olney Central was led by Kyla Reed, who finished game-high with 29 points.
The winner of the Midwest District championship gains will gain admittance to the NJCAA national tournament, which gets underway on March 16th in Lubbock, Tex. The 24-team, single-elimination tourney is comprised of 16 district winners from around the county, along with eight at-large selections. The tourney field and the first-round pairings will be announced live on Monday on the NJCAA web page.