Huntley slips past Jacobs
Huntley girls basketball coach Steve Raethz will take a road conference win any way his Red Raiders can get it.
But his facial expressions throughout didn’t seem like he enjoyed Huntley’s 36-33 Fox Valley Conference Valley Division win at rival Jacobs Wednesday night.
“It wasn’t a very pretty game,” Raethz said. “But obviously we’ll take it. But if this wasn’t a wake-up call for us, I don’t really know what is.”
It might be the Red Raiders’ (15-6, 6-1) shooting. They sank just 13 of 51 shots and also rang up 16 turnovers. The Raiders were outrebounded 33-24 but it might be that Jacobs (3-18, 2-6) was able to hang around throughout even on a bad night shooting (13 for 43) with 27 turnovers.
Jacobs led by 4 in the third and grabbed a 27-25 lead on Melanie Schwerdtmann’s basket to begin the fourth quarter, capping a 15-9 Golden Eagle run from halftime. Schwerdtmann shouldered the load by scoring 7 of her game-high 16 points (she also grabbed 12 rebounds) in a stretch where Jacobs played solid defense and created good shots, the complete opposite of the first half.
“I’m proud when they do that,” Jacobs coach Keith Chuipek said. “I walked (into the locker room) and said, ‘last time we were playing these guys we were down by 30 at this point. We’re down by 4 points this time and we have this look of gloom on us, we have a chance to steal this game because (Carly Goede) isn’t there so go out and take advantage of it.’ And they responded.”
Goede, Huntley’s leading scorer, injured her ankle last weekend and hasn’t been able to go all week. Raethz said her return is up in the air but hopes she can return by next week.
But even missing Goede, in a three-minute sequence after Schwerdtmann’s bucket early in the fourth, Meagan Flynn scored 4 of her 11 points in a 6-0 stretch that gave Huntley a 31-27 lead with 5:11 left.
“We were kind of struggling in the third and we needed to fire it up in the fourth and pull it out,” Flynn said.
Jacobs crawled back within 1 on Lauren Grady’s layup off the glass with 2:14 remaining.
And the momentum swayed Jacobs’ way on Grady’s steal with a minute left but it quickly departed as Jacobs coughed it up with 33.7 remaining, allowing Kadie Lowery to sink two huge free throws with just under 20 seconds left to seal it.
Schwerdtmann attempted a last-second heave to tie from 23 feet out but it came to no avail.
“Usually we play the ugly side and the other teams play the good side,” Chuipek said. “But they played maybe ugly too without their best player and gave us an opportunity and we took it right down to the wire, and that’s good.”
Lowery added 8 points for Huntley.