ECC honors Cassie Dumoulin for 1,000 points
Cassie Dumoulin’s basketball career at Elgin Community College — all 46 games of it — has been nothing short of outstanding.
So it was fitting Thursday night that Dumoulin and her family were presented with an encased game ball commemorating a milestone very few junior college basketball players ever reach — 1,000 career points. She is the first ECC basketball player to ever score 1,000 points.
Dumoulin has been a scoring machine the past two seasons for the Spartans and a key reason that ECC is in position to win its first conference championship since 2002-03.
The 5-foot-8 Hampshire product scored 16 points Thursday as the Spartans (12-5, 4-0) took sole possession of first place in the Illinois Skyway Collegiate Conference with a 69-64 win over defending league champion Prairie State at the ECC Events Center.
Freshman Alex Dumoulin, Cassie’s sister, led the Spartans with 23 points and 16 rebounds while sophomore DiJon Smith of South Elgin had 19 points and 12 rebounds.
“It was a really good team win,” said Cassie Dumoulin, who now has 1,031 career points at ECC. “DiJon was unstoppable down low and Alex hit some big shots. We got contributions from everyone.”
It was Alex Dumoulin who hit the shot of the game, burying a 3-pointer from the left corner on a perfect feed from her former Hampshire teammate Gianina Estocado with 1:52 left in the game that gave the Spartans a 64-59 lead. Cassie Dumoulin then scored with 1:08 left and Smith struck again with 22 seconds to play as ECC sent Prairie State (16-4 overall) to its first conference loss.
“That was a huge play,” said ECC coach Jerry McLaughlin of Alex Dumoulin’s 3-pointer. “This was a big win for us.”
The Spartans were in control most of the night, jumping out to a 5-0 lead, which they extended to as many as 8 points in the first half. But Prairie State came back to take two short-lived leads before Alex Dumoulin’s basket with 10 seconds to play in the first 20 minutes gave ECC a 35-34 advantage at the break.
The Spartans, who were 27 of 66 shooting for the game, then came out on fire in the second half, building as much as a 13-point lead at 51-38 with 10:12 to play. The Pioneers. who shot 24 of 65 including 9 of 28 from 3-point range, fought their way back into the game, though, and cut the Spartans’ advantage to 60-59 on a Latoi Merriweather basket with 3:50 to go.
Cassie Dumoulin made 1 of 2 free throws at the 3:28 mark to make it 61-59 before the teams played cat-and-mouse with the basketball until Alex Dumoulin’s 3-pointer gave ECC the separation it needed to work the clock the rest of the game.
“Our free throws need to get more consistent,” said McLaughlin, whose team was just 11 of 22 from the free-throw line. “But the intensity was there tonight.”
McLaughlin also lauded the play of sophomore Bridget Dumoulin, Cassie and Alex’s cousin, who hit 2 big baskets early in the second half and had 6 rebounds.
“Bridget was huge for us in the second half,” McLaughlin said. “She did a great job.”
But the night belonged to Cassie Dumoulin, who deflected the credit for her scoring to her coach and teammates.
“Coach McLaughlin has the type of game that has a lot of openings and it’s the style of offense I like to play,” she said. “I’ve gotten a lot of great passes from my teammates.”
McLaughlin, a coaching veteran, praised his star player.
“I’ve coached basketball for over 35 years at a lot of different levels and Cassie is the true example of a student-athlete,” he said of the engineering major. “Her athletic skills, her leadership abilities and her focus separate her from any player we’ve had in this program.”