NORMAL - Rochester High School girls basketball coach Mark Clemens was happy his team stayed even with undefeated Central Catholic for one half Saturday at Redbird Arena. Then came the inevitable. | Photo gallery | Box scores, schedules and stats

"Their press definitely wears you down. We ran out of gas," Clemens said. "It gets to the point where a kid gets tired and doesn't take those three steps towards the ball she needs to. And they run so many kids at you it kind of lulls you to sleep."

The top-seeded Saints overcame a sluggish start and dominated the final three quarters behind their relentless press to claim a 50-24 win over defending champion Rochester in the small school quarterfinals of the State Farm Holiday Classic.

Central (12-0) trailed 13-6 after going 2 for 10 from the field in the first quarter. Almost like clockwork, the Saints got it rolling in the second period and earned a 17-17 halftime tie before outscoring the Rockets 20-4 in the third quarter to break the game open.

"We always press. That's the bread and butter of our whole team," said Central sophomore center Jess Reinhart. "We struggled the first quarter but after that we played the way Central Catholic plays."

The Saints outscored Rochester 44-11 over the final three quarters while forcing the Rockets into 17 of their 21 turnovers. Rochester (9-6) had more turnovers than shots, 7-4, in the third period.

"We changed up our defense in the second quarter, switching more in our half court, and I think it really helped," said Central coach Debbie Coffman. "They were moving the ball around. It's a big court so we had to make some adjustments.

"I thought our kids handled it very well. They kept their composure and fought back in the second quarter and got control in the second half."

Reinhart led the Saints' balanced attack with 13 points and seven rebounds. Sophomore guard Allie Norton added 11 points and five assists for the Saints, who will face Kankakee Bishop McNamara at 6 p.m. Monday in the semifinals at Normal Community High School.

"We just got more excited about it and more pumped about it because we really wanted to win," Norton said. "We kind of changed some stuff, but other than that I think it was more just us hustling."

Katelyn Wise netted 10 of her game-high 15 points in the first half for Rochester, which only had three players enter the scoring column.

McNamara 59, Spring Valley Hall 22: Fourth-seeded McNamara (7-2) came out on fire from the field and blitzed Hall (9-3) with a game-opening 20-2 run to cruise into the semifinals.

Taylor Weigt poured in a game-high 15 points to lead the Fightin' Irish. Erika Tatum (13), Hilary Olszewski (11) and Belinda Schaafsma (10) also scored in double figures for McNamara.

"We've been here a few times on this court and we've never seen it go through the hole," said McNamara coach Jeff Bennett. "Everything is different when the ball goes in the basket, and we shot the ball well tonight."

Bennett has high anticipations for McNnamara's battle against No. 2-state ranked Central.

"We've been a little bit of an under the radar team," Bennett said. "We've played a quality schedule and we're really looking forward to playing a quality team like Bloomington Central Catholic."

Tolono Unity 59, Sterling Newman 49: Seventh-seeded Unity (11-4) rallied from a 13-point second half deficit to knock off second-seeded and previously unbeaten Sterling Newman (11-1).

"We stayed the course with what we wanted to do defensively," said Unity coach Kelly Gallick, a former assistant at NCHS. "We keep preaching to the kids if you make teams consistently go against our half-court defense good things are going to happen for us.

"When we got down (by 13) I was thinking there was still plenty of time and we need to be patient and it needs to happen one possession at a time."

Lauren Grubb poured in game-high 24 points for Unity, and Ana Deters added 20. Western Illinois recruit Michele Salvatori led Newman with 15 points.

Unity will face either Champaign St. Thomas More or Brimfield in Monday's semifinals. The St. Thomas More-Brimfield game was still in progress at press time.