Taylor Curry and her Waubonsie Valley teammates understood coach Brett Love’s plan for the playoff opener Tuesday night against East Aurora.
It didn’t make the task any easier.
“Stay in front of Mia (Moore),” Curry said. “Mia is a really good player and we had to stop her. We had to stop her.”
That job didn’t fall to just one player.
In basketball, sometimes it takes a community to stop the other team’s star player.
The Warriors made it work in the semifinals of the Class 4A Plainfield North Regional, at least in the second half, pulling away for a convincing 67-35 victory.
Curry, a 5-foot-8 junior guard, led the way for Waubonsie (15-13). She overcame foul trouble in scoring a game-high 21 points.
The win sends the fifth-seeded Warriors to a 7 p.m. Thursday championship game against the fourth-seeded host Tigers, who beat Yorkville 61-49 in the other semifinal.
Mia Moore, a 5-7 junior guard who entered averaging 26 points for 12th-seeded East Aurora (14-17), was named MVP of the Upstate Eight Conference late last week.
Love and his players already were well aware of her.
“We had a couple different strategies and three days of practice, so we went over a different strategy each day,” Love said. “We went with denying her the ball. We went with trapping her. We went with a zone trying to get her to give it up to somebody else and then trap them.
“The man-to-man we also used seem to work the best for us, trying to make sure she didn’t get the ball back when she gave it up.”
Senior guard Devin Lynch started out shadowing Moore. Freshman guard Lilly Newton also gave it a try. And then Moore saw other faces up close.
Even so, Moore produced 11 points in the first half, matching Curry for scoring honors to that point. East Aurora trailed just 26-23 at halftime.
“In the first half, we weren’t moving our feet like we needed to and (Love) got on us about that,” Curry said. “If there was an opportunity to double, we’d go trap her. He’d call it out. We had to mix it up.”
It worked as Moore was held to 15 points, 11 below her average.
Waubonsie’s offense then ratcheted things up, opening the third quarter with a 10-3 spurt and the fourth with a 20-2 burst.
Sophomore forward Hannah Laub had 15 points, nine rebounds and three steals and senior guard Amari Banks added 10 points and two steals as the Warriors outscored the Tomcats 41-12 in the second half.
“They threw so many defenses at Mia, it wore her down a little bit,” East Aurora coach Lee Clayborn said. “We didn’t have a deep bench, missing one of our starters who was out with a positive COVID test.
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“I don’t know how much it would have mattered. Waubonsie did a good job. They’re very athletic and were able to mix it up.”
Curry, who finished with four fouls, spent some time on the bench, but senior guard Grace Abrams came up big with seven points and three rebounds.
“That’s our shooter right there,” Curry said. “Everybody on the team is stepping up. Coming into the postseason, we knew we had to bring it together and play as a team.”
Eight players scored for the Warriors.
“They all chipped in,” Love said. “It wasn’t about any one person getting baskets. We made a decision to move the ball and try to keep moving.
“That’s one of our goals on offense. Everybody was involved and made sure we kept the defense guessing.”
Sophomore center Anastasia Bellamy added 13 points and eight rebounds for East Aurora, which had just four players score and were hurt by 20 turnovers.
“We were logging a lot of minutes and that got to us,” Clayborn said.