Illinois Preps Insider’s girls basketball top-20: Holiday tourney edition

Let’s start with some congratulations.

First, how about Maine West? Nobody touched the Warriors at Dundee-Crown. From dropping 36 in a quarter, to beating Jordan King and Hononegah by 20, and dismantling a tough New Trier team in the final. That’s about as impressive as a weekend as you can get.

Fremd deserves a ton of credit for outlasting Benet in triple-OT, but obviously the big victors were Nazareth.

The Roadrunners shook off their loss to Simeon and beat the likes of Evanston, Fremd, and Montini.

The big question for Naz was what can they do against a team with a ton of size? The win against Fremd answered a lot of those questions.

Area teams didn’t do great downstate, St. Ignatius, Kenwood, and Simeon did have some unlucky draws in the second round (criminally under-seeded if you ask me) and ended up playing each other in the consolation bracket.

Other than that just a few more quick notes, Wheaton North lost their first game of the year to Bartlett in the finals of their tourney, Libertyville won their own tournament, and Lincoln-Way West had no issues at Oswego East.

It’s funny, outside of the top-10 there really wasn’t a whole lot of movement. That’s what tends to happen when you have super tournaments like Montini and Bloomington. The top teams beat each other up, and the lower end of the top-20 win less heralded tourneys.

And remember, the consolation game have very little impact on anything here. Yes, they all count towards ones overall record but those who’ve played on the consolation side know how different it really is.

1. Maine West 1 (19-0) 1

Domination

2. Nazareth (15-1) 9

Fought through the gauntlet that was Montini

3. Montini (17-2) 7

Young guns growing up fast

4. Mother McAuley (16-1) 3

First loss of the season for the Mighty Macs

5. Fremd (17-2) 2

Ran out of gas after triple-OT win

6. Benet (18-3) 4

Still not worried, Red Wings will be fine

7. Whitney Young (12-4) 5

Will have a much better idea after Marist

8. St. Ignatius (13-4) 10

Tough quarterfinal draw

9. Simeon (12-7) 6

Back down to earth just a bit

10. Thornwood (13-0) 11

Strong chance to run the regular season table

11. Marist (12-3) 8

Struggle against really good teams

12. Loyola (14-4) 12

2-1 in Florida

13. Evanston (12-5) 13

Ridiculously tough consolation draw

14. New Trier (13-4) 14

Ran into a juggernaut

15. Kenwood (12-6) 15

Took Richwoods to the brink

16. Fenwick (16-4) 17

Third place at Dundee-Crown

17. Glenbrook South (14-3) NR

Solid run through Wheaton North

18. Stagg (13-3) 19

Will see what they’re made of against Bolingbrook

19. Wheaton North (13-1) 16

Semifinal loss in overtime

20. Geneva (9-5) 18

Solid, but need to find something outside Blackmore