Sandburg’s Olivia Trunk could have picked absolutely anyone.
When the junior guard was asked who she patterns her game after, she could have chosen Caitlin Clark or any WNBA player or even LeBron James. There are a lot of great college players, too.
But despite all of the big names in the basketball, she picked her older sister, Charlotte.
“I like her game because she does everything,” Olivia said.
Trunk did a little bit of everything Tuesday night, leading the host Eagles with 12 points, six rebounds and five steals in a 38-36 SouthWest Suburban Conference win over Lincoln-Way East in Orland Park.
Olivia’s twin sister, Zoe, added nine points for Sandburg (18-7, 8-4), including a basket after she was fouled with 1:48 left to break a 35-35 tie. She added a free throw with eight seconds left.
Monique Nkwogu tallied 13 rebounds and seven blocked shots, while Olivia Prodoehl hit the tying 3-pointer with 5:11 left in the fourth quarter and also had huge a rebound in the closing minutes.
Sophia Nanney paced the Griffins (17-10, 6-6) with 10 points. Kennedy Johnson had 14 rebounds.
Sandburg took the regular-season series with Lincoln-Way East, also winning 53-46 on Jan. 14 in Frankfort. The Eagles went 0-5 last season against the Griffins, facing each other twice in tournament finals, twice during the conference season and once in the regional.
Olivia Trunk helped the Eagles get going Tuesday night with seven points in the first half.
“We thought this was Liv Trunk’s best game of the season,” Sandburg coach Nick Fotopoulos said. “Defensively, she was great. She had good energy. Good focus. She did an awesome job.
“When Liv shoots the ball well to start the game, she really sets the tone for us. At the beginning, she was aggressive and shot the ball with purpose. She had some good looks and took them.”
Sandburg’s other Olivia, Prodoehl, also was key down the stretch with her 3-pointer.
“That fourth quarter was crazy,” Prodoehl said. “I was open and I thought ‘why not take the shot?’”
“She’s always there to make plays at the last minute,” Trunk said of Prodoehl. “She knows what she has to do.”
Lincoln-Way East came into the game off two big road decisions — a 47-40 win on Jan. 9 at Homewood-Flossmoor and a 32-30 win on Jan. 23 at Lockport.
The Griffins were hoping for another one, but Sandburg had other ideas, with the Eagles enjoying a 15-2 stretch after starting out with a 3-5 record.
“We bounced back from early in the season and stayed together,” Trunk said. “We’re a tight group.”
Patterning her game after her sister, Charlotte, also has proved to be a good move for Olivia.
Charlotte, who scored more than 1,000 points at Sandburg, thought about playing in college but gave it up when she went into nursing. She’s a senior student at Western Kentucky.
“Liv and her sister are very similar,” Fotopoulos said. “Charlotte was aggressive and did some different things, but Liv is on her way there.
“But body type, length and athleticism, they are similar.”
Fotopoulos got a kick out of seeing Charlotte return to Orland Park for an alumni game during the holiday break with her younger sisters watching.
“Charlotte had 25 points in that game and they were cheering on their sister,” Fotopoulos said of the twins. “It was a lot of fun.”
Fotopoulos hasn’t crunched all of the numbers, but he thinks Olivia and Zoe, who have both played varsity since their freshman year, are not far away from hitting the 1,000-point plateau.
That would be sister, sister, sister hitting the same milestone.
“It’s not something I need to have,” Olivia said. “But it would be cool.”
Jeff Vorva is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
