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Jacobs knocks off Deerfield for Molitor title

The Jacobs boys basketball team's rough-and-tumble 54-40 victory over Deerfield at Palatine was exactly the kind of gritty test coach Jimmy Roberts wanted for his team Saturday.

Jacobs and Deerfield squared off in the title game of the Ed Molitor Thanksgiving Classic for the second year in a row. Unlike last November when Deerfield used its full-court pressure to rattle a young Jacobs frontcourt into just enough game-deciding turnovers, the Golden Eagles on Saturday handled the pressure well enough to pull away in the second half for the title.

After committing 12 first-half turnovers, Jacobs made only 7 second-half errors while shooting 13 of 20 from the field.

"It was positive just to play that type of game against that type of program that's had success," Jacobs coach Jimmy Roberts said. "They're well-prepared, they're tough and you get in a fight. I'm really happy, particularly with the way that game went. We got in a fight, we got in a battle and we still found a way to kind of win going away at the end."

Jacobs (4-0) used a 14-3 run to turn a 24-23 mid-third quarter deficit into a 37-27 fourth-quarter lead.

Deerfield (2-2) took its second and last lead of the game with 4:52 left in the third quarter when senior guard Ben Bizar fed junior guard Alex Casieri for a transition layup.

After buckets by Cooper Schwartz and Mason Materna restored Jacobs' lead to 3 points, Loyola-bound senior Cam Krutwig shifted the surge into high gear. The 6-foot-9 forward ignited the fast break with back-to-back outlet passes that led to layups, first by Schwartz, then by 6-3 junior guard Kameron Mack.

"We work a lot in practice on (outlet) passes, and we try to be as dynamic a team as we can because a lot of teams are going to have to prepare for our fast-break opportunities," said Schwartz, who scored all of his game-high 13 points in the second half. "They're also going to have to prepare for our half court where we have Cam and we have a lot of great players that can score the basketball."

Krutwig finished with 10 points, 14 rebounds, 8 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks. He had help. Materna scored 9 points, Mack had 7, Ryan Phillips had 6 second-half points and junior guard Ajani Rodriguez came off the bench to score 9 points, all in the first half.

"We don't want to be the guys who come off the bench and just bide time for the starters," Rodriguez said of the second unit. "We want to make plays, score, extend the lead. We want to try to put them away."

Jacobs committed 19 turnovers to Deerfield's 14, but the Golden Eagles shot 60 percent from the field (22 of 37) compared to 30 percent for the Warriors (14 of 46).

"In the second half I give them credit because we couldn't score," Deerfield coach Dan McKendrick said. "And because we couldn't score, we couldn't get any full-court pressure going, and that really hurt our ability to stay close.

"But they're so good. They did such a good job of switching screens on us, making it difficult for us to find an easy look. Krutwig is a Division-I scholarship player for a reason. He had a great game against us."

Krutwig was named tournament MVP. Schwartz joined him on the all-tournament team, as did Deerfield's Bizar and Casieri.

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