OP_120618

42 | December 6, 2018 | The orland park prairie sports
opprairie.com
GIRLS BASKETBALL
Sandburg star
Stavropoulos injured
in LW West battle
JEFF VORVA, Sports Editor
Players, coaches and fans of
Sandburg’s girls basketball team
were holding their breaths and
crossing their fingers over the
weekend.
The Eagles’ top player, senior
Natalie Stavropoulos, suffered
what looked like a serious left knee
injury in the third quarter of a 61-47
loss to Lincoln-Way West on Thursday,
Nov. 29, in New Lenox.
The 5-foot-8 guard had an MRI
exam the following day and the
results were not expected to be revealed
to her until Monday, Dec.
3, after The Orland Park Prairie’s
deadline.
While the worst fear would be a
torn ACL, Eagles coach Nick Fotopoulos
said there was a small hint
that it might not be as severe.
“There is no pain on each side or
the back of the knee,” he said. “Everything
is on the outside. So, we’ll
see what comes back with the MRI.
There could be multiple things. We
just don’t know yet.”
Heading into the West game,
she led the team in scoring with 71
points in five games, and also led the
team with 20 assists and 19 steals.
Over the summer, she was hit in
the nose during a game and needed
surgery. Her sister, Victoria, suffered
a knee injury in 2014-2015
and missed significant time her senior
year.
Ironically, there were two published
reports in a 24-hour period,
including one in The Prairie, highlighting
the fact that she was healthy
the first few weeks of the season.
Sandburg had a 37-33 lead in the
West when the injury occurred.
“I thought we were playing well
and I thought we were going to
win,” Fotopoulos said. “That would
have been a big win for us. After it
happened, you literally could have
heard a pin drop in the gym. We
were shocked after that. Natalie is
the sweetest kid in the world and
we’re hoping for the best.”
Sandburg’s Natalie Stavropoulos,
shown in the first quarter against
Lincoln-Way West on Thursday,
Nov. 29, suffered a knee injury later
in the game.
JEFF VORVA/22ND CENTURY MEDIA
Not again!
Last season, the Eagles lost
shooting guard Morgan McAuliffe
the first game of the season with a
torn ACL and she missed most of
the season.
While Stavropoulos’s injury
hasn’t been diagnosed yet, she will
miss some time and the Eagles will
have to play on without her.
“We had a team meeting on Friday
and now everyone has to step up,”
Fotopoulos said. “We need someone
to fill that void and it’s definitely not
going to be one person. It will have
to be multiple players.’’
There was good news
Two days before the West loss
and injury, the Eagles beat Lemont,
59-27, on the road as junior Kayla
Snaidoff had 14 points, Stavropoulos
had 10 and Stephanie Faro
added seven.
Up next
The Eagles face District 230
foe Stagg on Thursday, Dec. 6, in
Palos Hills and finally make their
home debut against Argo at 6 p.m.
on Tuesday, Dec. 11. That halts
a streak of eight games that were
either on an opponent’s court or a
neutral court.
BOYS BASKETBALL
Eagles ‘hit in mouth’ by lack of communication
TIM CRONIN, Freelance Reporter
As a veteran coach is wont to
do, Todd Allen put a 75-49 thumping
of his Sandburg boys basketball
team by Thornton Township
on himself on Friday, Nov. 30.
“I don’t think I had our guys
very ready to play tonight,” Allen
said as the triumphant Wildcats
walked toward their bus outside
the Sandburg gym. “That’s on me.
I thought our effort and intensity
wasn’t what it had been previous
to this. I thought we were lacking
a little bit in defensive intensity.”
It didn’t start out that way. Sandburg
led in the early minutes and
trailed 15-14 after a quarter, but
Thornton tightened defensively in
each subsequent quarter, the margins
in the final three by four, eight
and 13 points. The Wildcats held
Sandburg to 39 percent shooting,
outrebounded the hosts 24-18 and
ran wild themselves, going 16-of-
22 from the floor in the second
half, when they doubled up on
Sandburg, 42-21.
The Wildcats, led by Ari
Brown’s 21 points, went for the
kill in the first four minutes of
the second half, expanding a fivepoint
intermission margin to 15
through a pair of three-pointers by
DeMarco Minor, who tallied 17
points – the Wildcats had 10 threepointers
in all – and midrange
jumpers the Eagles couldn’t stop.
Sandburg cut the gap to 11 points,
but no closer.
“That was a pretty quick turnaround
in a pretty short time
frame,” Allen said. “We had two
open threes we missed and they
had two open threes they hit.
We never really recovered from
there.”
Kevin Agwomoh led Sandburg
with 15 points, and put his finger
on a lack of communication.
“We came into the second half
looking for a stop, and we weren’t
talking a lot; the whole game, actually,”
Agwomoh said. “That just
hit us in the mouth. We folded under
pressure, I guess. Individually,
we were trying to get that going
in practice. Some guys do it and
Sandburg’s Kevin Agwomoh (left) gets a shot off against Thornton’s
Brandon Hall in an Eagles home-opening loss on Friday, Nov. 30.
JEFF VORVA/22ND CENTURY MEDIA
some guys just feel they don’t
have to. We keep preaching it in
practice, but I don’t know, sometimes
it goes away.”
A work in progress
The outcome was Sandburg’s
third defeat in succession and
dropped the Eagles to 3-3.
What kind of a team does Allen
have after six games – about
20 percent of the regular-season
schedule?
It is one learning how to play
together.
“We’ve got a long ways to go,”
Allen said. “I love coaching them.
They’re great kids. They work really
hard. But we’re 13 juniors and
three seniors, so we’ve got to find
some guys as the year goes who
are going to get better and step up
and give us a lift. We’re searching
for those guys.”
For the most part, Allen has a
six-man rotation, with sub Leo
Serdar seeing significant minutes
along with seniors Kevin Agwomoh,
Marvin Agwomoh, Ian
Sanders and juniors Khaled Salah
and Atharva Atreya. In comparison,
Thornton rotated eight
men through the game, and their
relative freshness translated into
quickness as the game went on.
Rocky road
Three days before Thornton
came calling, Sandburg traveled to
Lemont and hung with the talented
Indians, trailing by three points in
the final quarter before dropping a
55-46 decision.
“Lemont made 10 threes and we
made two,” Allen said.
Kevin Agwomoh tallied 15
points and five rebounds while
Marvin Agwomoh scored 14
points and grabbed 13 rebounds.
But the Eagles garnered only five
points off the bench, compared to
six against Thornton.
Up next
The Friday, Dec. 7 game at
Stagg opens the SouthWest Suburban
Blue slate, it’s also the first of
four games in eight days and six
in 12, making the practices prior to
playing the Chargers critical. The
Eagles host St. Ignatius the following
day, then play three straight at
Oak Forest, Lincoln-Way East and
Crete-Monee.