Jacobs tops Dundee-Crown, now 26-1
Head coach Jimmy Roberts hasn't been shy to describe what kind of team he has at Jacobs this season.
And after the Golden Eagles knocked off rival Dundee-Crown 53-38 Friday in Algonquin to cap another Fox Valley Conference title with a 15-1 record, Roberts didn't want to neglect the present even if its widely known what he and Jacobs aspires to do in the IHSA tournament starting next week.
"We have such a great group of kids and it's really a once in a lifetime group," echoed Roberts, whose team showed it on the court by finishing their regular season at 26-1, which tied the school record for most wins in a season (2007) and completed a 3-peat of FVC titles on Senior Night. "We lost one game and go 15-1 in the league. I don't care how good or down people say our league is. To go 15-1 against familiar opponents where you're the target every single night it's a tremendous accomplishment by these guys. And we've tried to enjoy every single game and all these different moments we've had throughout the year."
Jacobs will turn its attention to the goal it had from the start which is to become sectional champs but looking at the now as Roberts alluded to, you can't find anything wrong with how Jacobs handled D-C for the second time this year.
The Golden Eagles shot a 51.2 percent clip in the win as Loyola-bound Cam Krutwig led the way with 19 points and 11 rebounds while fellow senior Mason Materna had 13 points, 2 rebounds and 2 assists to go with his 3 three-pointers.
Krutwig came out scoring the game's first 6 points attacking the rim with his patented hook shot in the lane and dominated the third quarter in the paint in much of the same way.
"(Cam) gets swarmed so much in our league I thought he had a little space," Roberts said. "He was able to kind of move a little bit in the post and it was good to see him knock down a couple shots, a couple post moves and he got us going."
"I just kind of came out and looked for my shot a little more," Krutwig added. "They're going to fight and going to battle and we wanted to come out hot and talked about it, getting up early and that's what we did."
Jacobs took an 18-9 lead into the second which almost disappeared thanks to a 12-3 run by D-C (4-22, 2-14). Brett Buske's layup with 4:10 left made it 21-19 but Jacobs ended the half on a 9-0 run led by Materna, who scored on a drive and nailed a right corner 3 with 1:10 left to take a 30-21 lead into the half.
"No matter what anybody says about Dundee-Crown they're always going to give you a fight," said Materna who was 5 of 7 from the field and scored all his points in the first half. "They get overlooked a lot and they have a bunch of kids on their team who are going to fight to the end so it's always big to come out and make shots against them and get on runs to separate yourself. They're always around, I feel like. No matter how much you're up until you separate they're always in the fight."
Juniors Nik Balkcom added 6 points and Phillips finished with 5 coming off the bench in lieu of Senior Night. D-C, led by junior Gabriel Bergeron's 8 points and 10 rebounds, didn't appear to be out of as its 18 turnovers and 30.4 percent might argue. The pesky Chargers chipped it down to 7 with 4:00 left in the third but a Phillips' 3 was the start of a 7-1 run that upped the lead to 13 and expanded to 17 in the fourth. The Chargers simply couldn't keep up and its 5 made shots in the final 2 quarters was another reason why.
"I thought we did a better job in the second half playing better basketball but we just couldn't score," Chargers coach Lance Huber said of his team's 17-point second half. "I think we stopped them five times in-a-row and couldn't capitalize at all. And that's been the story of our season."