Sweet relief as Antioch hangs on
Not again!
That’s the thought, not to mention the determined rallying cry, that rushed through every Antioch player’s mind on Monday night.
The Sequoits were facing Woodstock in the eight-team Martin Luther King Day Shootout at Woodstock North, and the nature of the game was looking all too familiar.
Over the holidays, Antioch suffered a gut-wrenching Marengo tournament loss to Woodstock by wasting a 13-point third-quarter lead.
This time, the Sequoits were up by as many as 14 points in the third quarter. And, once again, Woodstock began to chip away. And chip and chip and chip.
“We did not want to let that happen again,” Antioch senior guard Joe Gregory said emphatically of a Woodstock comeback. “It hurts to lose like that.”
Antioch’s lead got down to 5 points.
But this time, that’s as low as it got, and the Sequoits, behind Gregory’s clutch 6-for-7 performance at the free throw line in the fourth quarter, pulled out a relieving 49-42 redemption win.
The victory was also very much needed for Antioch’s collective psyche. The Sequoits haven’t been on this side of the equation much at all this season. They are now 4-14 overall.
“It feels good to get a win like this,” said senior forward Karl Nettgen, who paced Antioch with a game-high 17 points. “It’s been tough this season, but you just fight through it and you hope that when you do get wins that you can keep it rolling.”
The 6-foot-5 Nettgen was rolling all over Woodstock inside.
He used a considerable size advantage to score most of his points in the paint and dominate the boards. He pulled down 9 rebounds.
“He knew to stay down low because Woodstock doesn’t have a lot of size and he really did a good job in there,” Antioch coach Jim White said of Nettgen, who also made Woodstock pay for fouling him. He was 5-for-6 at the line, including a 3-for-4 clip late in the fourth quarter with the game on the line.
“Karl was tough inside and really aggressive on the boards,” White continued. “I bet five or six of his 9 rebounds were on the offensive end.”
As a team, Antioch rolled up 16 offensive rebounds. But besides controlling the boards, the Sequoits also took much better care of the ball than usual.
They average more than 24 turnovers per game on the season, but against Woodstock they held that number down to 15.
“We often play tight and that leads to a lot of errors,” said White, who is in his first year at the helm. “Then, when things get bad, we get very emotional. We wear our emotions on our sleeves and you can see the guys getting frustrated.
“Today, we were able to be stronger mentally and that helped us put the game away in the end.”
Besides, Nettgen and Gregory, senior guard William Waschow also scored in double-figures for Antioch. He had 10 points. Meanwhile, junior guard Anthony Formella added 9 points for the Sequoits.
Jordan Turner, who scored 24 points against Antioch over the holidays, led Woodstock this time around with 15 points. Brad Lorr added 11 points for the Blue Streaks.