Coal City girls beat LWW to advance to regional championship

It was enough to give the locals a five-point lead against Lincoln-Way West, though it represented all the points in the game to that moment for the locals.

Halliday would go on to finish with a game-high 22 points as the Coalers earned the right to play in their own championship game with a 57-38 win over the Warriors.

"We didn't quite know what to expect from them (Warriors) coming in, but we know if Emily is able to slash and cut that we'd be fine," Coal City coach Brad Schmitt said. "Britta (Spelde) is such a good passer. She found Emily tonight and Emily finished."

It's something that Halliday admits she had been having trouble with lately.

"Lately I've been struggling making my layup," Halliday admitted. "So to get out there and make some layups and threes early was nice."

Coal City led 15-11 at the end of the first quarter and took a 25-17 lead into the locker at halftime.

The good start by Halliday not only got her going, but it also served to calm the team down in. Coal City was playing in it's first Class 3A regional ever.

"We were kind of nervous coming in. We knew they had a tough team," Halliday said. "But I think we pulled it off well."

"I've always told the team that we are much better when we play with the lead instead of chasing," Schmitt said. "We always want to start fast and finish strong and I think we did that tonight."

Part of that was because the Coalers clamped down on the outside shooting game of the Warriors. Then limited their guests to a lot of one-shot opportunities when they penetrated.

"For us, we've lived and died by the three-point field goal all year and obviously they were not going down tonight," Lincoln-Way West coach Ryan White said."Overall our shooting was not good, either and the defense ... we gave up way too many points to expect that we could win."