Lindbergh Girls Fall to Eureka in Crucial League Clash

The Lindbergh and Eureka varsity girls basketball teams battled on Tuesday night for what will probably be the deciding game for the Suburban West Conference championship.

Each team entered this matchup at Eureka undefeated. Eureka (15-5) took the lead early and never looked back in a 75-60 win. The win gives the Wildcats a 6-0 conference record while Lindbergh (14-6) falls to 3-1 in conference play.

Lindbergh freshman guard LaTondra Brooks led the Flyers with 21 points. She scored 11 points in the first half, and then drilled all five of her fouls shots in the second half. Senior guard Keonia Blair, who averages 20.6 points per game, scored 16 points in the game.

But the efforts of Blair and Brooks weren’t enough.

“One problem was, we relied too much on two of our girls,” Flyers coach Bill Thoele said. “We didn’t play really as a team.

“Usually we’re a pretty aggressive team,” Thoele said, “They came out and had a lot of shots on us. They shot the ball pretty well, I think, and they got that lead, and we couldn’t come back. It was too much of a deficit for us.”

Six-foot-3 junior center Alex Hillyer led all scorers with 27 points, and added 10 rebounds for the Wildcats. Her eight points in the first period led Eureka to a 16-6 lead. Senior guard Melissa Menchella added four points in the quarter, and had 16 for the game.

Hillyer scored eight points in the second period, and added eight in the third. It was a 60-37 game after three quarters.

Eureka coach James Alsup said, “We couldn’t stop her (Brooks) from doing anything for a while. Normally 14 (Blair) does it for them, but 32 (Brooks) had a hell of a night. It was a good hard-fought basketball game by the two teams that were left undefeated in the conference.”

Lindbergh plays Friday against Parkway South at home.