Jacobs holds off St. Viator
You couldn't tell by the postgame attitude of the Jacobs girls basketball team that the Golden Eagles had won a game Friday night.
That's because they almost didn't.
Jacobs overcame blowing a 12-point third-quarter lead and got 8 points from senior Hailey Cnota in the fourth quarter to hold off St. Viator 39-37 at the Dundee-Crown Thanksgiving tournament.
"Give all the credit to St. Viator," said Jacobs coach Ed Haugens after a lengthy postgame meeting with his team. "They outplayed us in every way possible and they deserved to win that game. The only positive I can take out of that game is that we found a way to win in the end. That's it."
After an 8-8 first-quarter tie, Jacobs' defense held the Lions (0-1) to 4 points in the second quarter while the offense built a 22-12 halftime lead. The Golden Eagles (3-0) built that to a 26-14 advantage early in the third quarter, but that's when the wheels fell off and St. Viator got back into the game. The Lions held the Golden Eagles scoreless for the final 5:52 of the third and used a balanced offense to pull within 26-24 by the end of the quarter.
St. Viator's run actually became 17-2 at one point and the Lions held a 31-28 lead with 4:26 left in the game and still had a 33-30 advantage with 3:12 to play when Jacobs woke up and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
"We were playing without two starters and we didn't have a lot of time to prepare," said St. Viator coach Paul Bjerkness, whose team was without seniors Susan Hohenadel (injured Thursday) and Mary Calov (injured Friday). "Jacobs is a good team. We had five girls starting tonight who have never started a varsity game before. We played our tails off and I thought my kids did an outstanding job. We held them to 22 points in the first half and 17 in the second and I'll take that any day of the week."
Down 33-30, Jacobs got a bucket from Cnota (10 points) and a free throw from Maria Tamburrino to tie the game with 1:54 to play. The Golden Eagles then took the lead for good at the 1:41 mark when Sierra Dunner (8 points, 4 steals) stole the ball, passed to Tamburrino and then got a perfect feed back from Tamburrino (5 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists) for a layup. After the Lions got a free throw from Meghan McGrath (7 points, 3 steals) to make it 35-34, Cnota hit 2 from the line with 32 seconds left and then two more after her own steal with two seconds to play. St. Viator senior Meghan Malone fired in a 3-pointer from beyond half-court at the buzzer for the final margin.
"We stepped it up at the end better but we weren't patient enough," said Cnota, who added 3 steals and a block. "We were getting irritated because things weren't going our way. We weren't rebounding and we were getting out-hustled."
Junior Melanie Schwerdtmann led Jacobs, which was 17 of 34 shooting, with 12 points, 10 of them in the first half. Senior Ronnie Mack led the Lions, who were 14 of 39 shooting, with 9 points.