In sports, one of the toughest things a team can do is beat another team in three straight games. In that regard, the Lady Eagles are in good shape, as they continue their season in the Region IV Finals against a familiar opponent, the Kishwaukee College Cougars.

The first game between the two teams was on Feb. 7. In a close game, the Lady Eagles lost to the Cougars 59-54. The second game on Feb. 17 was a completely different monster; the Cougars routed the Lady Eagles 76-48.

With that game behind them, the Lady Eagles had one game against the Carl Sandburg Lady Chargers on Feb. 22 to recover and prepare for the regional tournament, hosted on their own court.

IVCC beat Carl Sandburg 64-54 in the final game of the regular season. The final regular season record was 22-7 for Head Coach Pat Cinotte’s team.

The tournament began with IVCC earning the No. 2 seed behind Kishwaukee College, so if the Lady Eagles were going to get another shot at the Cougars, they were going to need to win each of their first two tournament games, and another familiar team awaited them in the first round, the team they beat to end the regular season, the Chargers.

In the first round of the tournament, played on March 1, Kishwaukee thoroughly defeated McHenry in the first round 66-25 and IVCC went on to beat Carl Sandburg again, this time by a score of 71-60.

Against the chargers, Johnnika Nash led the team with 17 points. Julie Haye added 12 points and Alycia Welch scored 10.

In the other first round games, Black Hawk College beat Highland 91-75 and Elgin dropped Waubonsee 66-62.

The Black Hawk Braves then gave the Cougars a scare in the second round on March 3 in Oglesby in a hard fought game that Kishwaukee ended up winning 61-60. IVCC played Elgin later that day and won 73-66.

Three players scored in double digits, with Haye leading the team with 19 points. Nash scored 17 and Elizabeth Liptak put up 10.

The final round matchup will be played on March 10 at 2:30 p.m. in Oglesby.