Jacobs wins at Dundee-Crown
The Jacobs boys basketball team put itself in excellent position Friday night with yet another hard-fought road win.
Having already secured key victories in the past two weeks at Huntley and at Cary-Grove, the Golden Eagles made it 3-for-3 in Fox Valley Conference Valley Division road games with a 48-45 victory over District 300 rival Dundee-Crown in Carpentersville.
The victory keeps Jacobs (12-8, 4-0) alone in first place, half a game ahead of Huntley (15-4, 4-1).
“As many as you can win on the road the better because now we’ve got a couple at home,” said Jacobs senior guard Nick Hofman, who led all scorers with 20 points. “It’s looking good.”
“We’ve had some tough road wins and I’m very happy with how we’ve played on our opponents’ courts,” Jacobs coach Jim Hinkle said.
Senior point guard Mike Peterson split 2 free throws with 7.6 seconds left to give Jacobs a 3-point lead. Dundee-Crown was out of timeouts at that point, but Hinkle called timeout to talk over the defense, a chat that paid dividends.
D-C senior forward Ryan Smith triggered the inbounds pass to Dylan Kissack in the backcourt. He, in turn, passed to junior guard Bruce Dantzler racing over the midcourt line. The plan, according to Smith, was for Dantzler and Smith to run a high pick-and-roll while Kissack positioned himself beyond the 3-point arc, where he had already made three 3-pointers.
However, the pick-and-roll never materialized and Dantzler drove to his right, where he was forced to take a long, high-arcing 3-point attempt that missed long. The rebound was pulled down by Jacobs junior Alex Glover as time expired.
“It doesn’t come down to the last play,” Chargers coach Lance Huber said. “I thought it was going to come down to turnovers, and we had a few of them in the first half where they had easy breakaways. They made their free throws and we missed ours. In a nutshell I think that was the game.”
Jacobs made 17-of-26 free-throw attempts, including 9 of 14 in the fourth quarter; Dundee-Crown made only 13 of 25. Jacobs won the turnover battle, 16-12.
“We played a pretty good overall game,” said Smith, who led the Chargers with 16 points. “We just had a few lapses when we had turnovers and they got a few easy layups at the other end. In a 3-point game when they get 6 points on the other end when nobody’s guarding them — those are killers.”
Jacobs took a 21-14 halftime lead after making 6 steals in the first half, paced by two apiece from Glover and senior Matt Ehrhardt. Hofman scored 12 of the Golden Eagles’ 21 first-half points.
The Chargers opened the third quarter on an 8-2 run, capped by Kissack 3-pointers on consecutive possessions that pulled D-C within 23-22.
“I’ve been struggling with my shot lately, so I’ve been working on it a lot,” Kissack said. “That practice paid off in the game.”
Kissack sank another 3-pointer with 3:45 left in the fourth quarter to tie the game, 40-40, but Ehrhardt was fouled on a drive at the other end and split a pair from the line to give Jacobs the lead. The Golden Eagles led from that point forward, helped by the fact the Chargers missed the front end of the bonus twice in the next two minutes.
Dundee-Crown cut its deficit to 47-45 on a low-post bank shot by senior Jamel Kimbrough (9 points, 11 rebounds) with nine seconds left, but Peterson split 2 free throws with 7.6 seconds left for the final margin.
“While I didn’t think we played the greatest game, we were really gritty,” Hinkle said. “We fell behind after giving up a 6 or 7-point lead and it didn’t faze us. We came back and played tough defensively and knocked down our free throws at the end when we needed to. That’s been kind of our formula this year. I’m real happy with it.”