Girls Prep Basketbal: Elverado advances to Chester semifinals

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The Elverado Lady Falcons have advanced to the championship semifinals of the 4th annual Chester Lady Jacket Mid-Winter Classic girls&#237; basketball tournament and beat the host team to do so.

Leading start to finish Tuesday night, Elverado advanced to the championship semifinals with a 47-36 win over the host Lady Yellow Jackets.

Elverado will play Marissa-Coulterville in a 6 p.m. semifinal round game Thursday night at Daniel Colbert Memorial Gym.

The Lady Meteors cruised past Agape Christian 84-30 in the other quarterfinal round game Tuesday night.

Elverado (4-12) jumped out to a 10-4 lead after the first quarter thanks to six first-quarter points from senior Courtney Morse.

Despite being outscored 14-12 in the second, the Lady Falcons held a 22-18 lead at the intermission.

Both teams had trouble finding their offensive rhythm in the third quarter but Elverado outscored Chester 9-6 and took a 31-24 lead heading to the fourth.

Chester managed to cut the Lady Falcons lead down to two points in the fourth quarter but couldn&#237;t overcome the first half deficit.

Elverado outscored the Lady Jackets 16-12 in the fourth to win the opener 47-36.

Morse finished with a game high 15 points while Chelsea Cochran finished with 14.

Sami Hicks (8), Jennifer Sarensen (6), Liz Falter (2) and Lacey Qualis (2) also scored for Elverado.

Chester was led by Shelly Lyons&#237; eight points while Hilary Best finished with seven.

Chester High School Athletic Director Mike Coffey announced Tuesday night that because of the pending winter storm expected to hit the Chester area Wednesday night, the start times for Wednesday night's session of the 4th annual Lady Jacket Mid-Winter Classic have been moved up.

Sesser-Valier-Waltonville will play New Athens at 5 o'clock while Trico playing Valmeyer at 6:30pm.