Hot-shooting Jacobs makes it 19-1

From Saturday's win over New Trier at the War on the Shore to Tuesday's night 55-41 Fox Valley Conference victory at Crystal Lake Central, the Jacobs boys basketball team showed little to no difficulty dealing with the contrasting styles of its opponents.

Senior Cam Krutwig posted his typical numbers, leading all scorers with 20 points and 13 rebounds. Junior guard Ryan Phillips was hot again, scoring all of his 12 points in the first half on 5 of 9 shooting. And minus a 4-for-14 fourth quarter from the field with the game out of reach, Jacobs sizzled through 3 quarters with a 51.4 percent clip from the field, even with the deep backdrops within the Tigers' field house.

But the Golden Eagles (19-1, 8-1), in pursuit of not only Prairie Ridge in conference but back-to-back 20-win seasons, know they can't take a night off, even on the road against a team who took them down to the wire in a 3-point win on their home court on December 7.

"I say these things are never easy, every game is of the upmost importance," Golden Eagles coach Jimmy Roberts said. "It helps we're chasing somebody, PR. We're sitting here at 19-1 but in second place in our league. We have zero margin for error. So whatever the other team's record is we have to win."

And it looked like a typical conference win for Jacobs, which besides the aforementioned 3-point win, has soundly defeated its other FVC opponents by a 23.2 point margin.

Jacobs took Central out much earlier this time around. The Eagles erased a 3-point deficit to start the second quarter thanks to 7 points by Phillips and used a 21-10 advantage - fueled by a 10-0 run - to cancel out a fast start by the Tigers.

"They hit a lot of shots - (Alex Timmerman) hit four 3s, we expect teams to be able to hit shots against us but we have to give it right back," Phillips said. "We want teams to come at us like that and it's fun to give our best shot back."

That came after Colton Haviland tied it at 20 with a 3 at the 5 minute mark. Cooper Schwartz answered with one of his own and Krutwig then took over scoring on 2 layups. Nik Balkcom's 3 from the top of the key capped it, giving Jacobs a 30-20 lead with a little over 2 minutes left in the half.

"Second quarter we wore down and they went on a run and we couldn't answer," Central coach Rich Czeslawski said. "You look at that team there's a reason they are as good as they are. They're deep, physical, athletic. They've got weapons, shooters, post guys. We just couldn't keep up that last four minutes (of the second quarter) and that was the difference of the game."

Timmerman led Central with 16 points and 10 boards as he connected on 4 from downtown while Haviland finished with 9. But Central finished with a 34 percent clip from the field and a cold third quarter where Jacobs turned up the defense and limited the Tigers to 8 points on 3 shots. Jacobs eventually pushed it to 16, its biggest lead of the night, and Jacobs finished 6 of 15 from 3-point as 6 different shooters connected on deep shots.

"Anytime we go on the road in conference it's going to be tough to play, this gym is a little weird with the backdrops," Krutwig said of his team's fifth straight win. "We just come in with the same mentality every game and play our hardest."