Once should have been enough.
One painful, unexpected ejection from the girls state quarterfinals should be all one group of basketball players and coaches should have to endure. Yet here they were again, sitting in the interview room last March at Illinois State’s Redbird Arena, trying to explain to pens and microphones how it could have happened for a second straight year.
From the shocked, distraught expressions on the faces of Rachel Buchek, Maggie Mocchi and coach Tom Dineen, it was clear they were still trying to explain it to themselves, especially trying to understand the injury that had all but snatched away the trophy and medals they would have clinched just by reaching the Class AA Final Four.
Eight months later, as Dineen and his veteran team resume their pursuit, the pain still lingers.
“We really had an opportunity to be state champions when they were sophomores,” said Dineen, glancing at Mocchi and her twin sister, Allison, who were sitting nearby at the school. “We really had an opportunity to be state champions when they were juniors.
“A couple of different factors didn’t work out. It bothers me every day still. It bothers them every day, I’m sure.”
Now he glanced at his 2000 state title ring.
“I had the opportunity to win a state championship, and I think about it every day. This ring reminds me.
“The two losses remind me every day too.”
The twins nodded.
“Every day,” Maggie said.
Now Buffalo Grove will find out whether a third state finals trip might be the charm or if it will be three strikes and you’re out because this is the last shot for the Mocchis, Ellen Ayoub and Lauren Angotti, the four seniors who have been varsity players for four years.
In 2005, with the Mocchis and Ayoub as starters, Buffalo Grove reached the supersectionals before acting its age in a 55-34 loss to Warren.
In 2006, Buffalo Grove reached the quarterfinals against Bolingbrook. The Bison led 54-50 in overtime until Bolingbrook’s Brittney Thomas hit a three-point shot with 22 seconds left, and then a turnover put the ball in the hands of Mauvolyene Adams, who laid it in with six seconds left for a 55-54 victory.
“I think we as a team panicked,” said Allison, who like her sister scored 15 points.
Dineen was especially upset because he believed an officiating error had contributed to the crucial turnover, though he faulted his team for being out of position on Thomas’ shot. And neither he nor his players felt any better when Bolingbrook won the state championship, or when they checked out of their hotel Sunday just as Bolingbrook was departing with the title trophy.
“You know as a team you could have gotten there,” Allison said. “You can’t live in the past, but if you changed one possession you might have gotten there.”
Last season Buffalo Grove took a 34-1 record into the quarterfinals against Morton (Ill.). The Bison had a 17-11 lead with a minute left in the first quarter when Allison did a spin move and crumbled to the court.
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She lay there in pain that was all too severe and all too familiar. She had felt it in November 2004 and in July 2005, so she realized she once again had dislocated her right kneecap, and she realized she was done for the game, leaving with seven points in seven minutes.
“I was like freaking out because I knew I would not be able to play,” she said, pulling her practice jersey over her face at the memory of it and to cover her tears.
Her teammates kept the game close, but the loss of the Tribune All-State special mention selection was too much to overcome. Morton won 59-55, then lost by 23 to eventual runner-up Bolingbrook.
The locker room was a study in devastation as Dineen groped for words.
“After the first year, I thought, ‘Why did this happen?'” he said of the 2006 defeat. “After the second year it was, ‘Why? What did we do wrong? These kids don’t deserve this.’
“Again we go home empty-handed. It was a tough pill to swallow.”
Buchek was the team’s only senior, and supporters offered consoling words about the future, but Maggie knew way too well how little that meant.
“People say, ‘next year, next year,’ but you want it now,” said the second-team All-State pick, who scored 20 points in that game. “The years run out, so you want to get it.”
With the Mocchis, Ayoub and sophomore Heather Nisbet as returning starters, Buffalo Grove has a great chance to get it this time and end its own version of March Madness.
The key is replacing Buchek, a four-year starter at point guard. Angotti, last year’s top sub, gets her starting spot, but Dineen calls all his starters guards and may employ point guard by committee.
The other big question is Allison’s knee. She had surgery to remove cartilage and wasn’t cleared to play until mid-October. She said she is almost fully recovered but likely will wear a brace the entire season.
The twins will play for Northwestern next year, and Ayoub has committed to Loyola. Dineen apparently will exit with them too.
He is retiring from teaching, and though he wants to remain at Buffalo Grove as a coach, administrators say they almost certainly will follow their policy of hiring head coaches who work in the building.
“I’m a senior like these guys,” said Dineen, who enters his 29th season as Bison coach with a 644-225 record and may coach elsewhere next season. “I picked a pretty good group to go out with.”
That, of course, adds one more subplot to a team that already has its share of them. Dineen doesn’t want his status to be on his players’ minds, but expecting them to forget it is like expecting them to forget Bolingbrook and Morton.
Few coaches forge emotional bonds as strong as those Dineen forms with his players, and he has become closer to the Mocchis than most. This Halloween, for instance, the twins showed up at his house dressed as a pair of dice, a costume from a long-ago trick-or-treat excursion, then hung around to watch the Bulls game.
“We’re really lucky to have him as coach,” Maggie said. “We want to do it for him and us and to show he taught us well.”
Dineen, though, has won the big prize and desperately wants his current players to experience that feeling this March in the new Class 4A.
“Especially being so close twice,” he said. “We’ve got experience. We’ve got talent.
“For us not to come home with a trophy and medal would be a disappointment.”
The twins have their minds set on a trophy, but it’s clear they don’t want less than the grand prize.
“All we really want is to win state,” Maggie said, while acknowledging that adversity doesn’t give her team dibs on the crown.
“It’s not automatically our turn. We have to work hard to win it, and we have.”
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*Read Barry Temkin’s blog “Upon Further Review” at chicagosports.com/temkin