Jacobs clamps down on Huntley
Every Fox Valley Conference game for the Jacobs boys basketball team seems to present a different challenge.
Tuesday's 50-28 win over Huntley in Algonquin featured a 1-3-1 defense the Golden Eagles (21-1, 10-1) rarely see and a quiet first half from Cam Krutwig they typically never receive.
The Red Raiders gave Jacobs a triangle-and-2 look throughout while Krutwig didn't attempt a shot or score his first points until the 4:47 mark of the third quarter.
A year ago that could've been an issue but no Krutwig for the first 19 minutes was no problem as Jacobs stymied the Huntley defense and used other weapons in senior Mason Materna and junior Nik Balkcom to get the job done.
"That's what we can do," said Balkcom, who helped Jacobs connect on 46.1 percent of its shots, including 7 of 16 from deep. "We have more guys who can score than just Cam. Mason stepped up in the first half with 10 points, that helped and that's what we can do."
Junior Ryan Phillips led all scorers with 12 points to go with 3 rebounds and 2 steals while Krutwig had 10 points and 12 rebounds. But it was Materna, who finished 10 points and 5 rebounds and Balkcom, who added 8 points on two 3-pointers to go with 4 assists, 3 steals that carried Jacobs in the first half.
"They were really trying to take Cam, Ryan and Cooper Schwartz out of the game," said Materna. "It makes sense. Cooper and Ryan are deadly shooters and Cam is Cam. That left Nik and I open and it was big for me to hit those 3s to open the game to get the ball rolling and even out their defense."
Materna and Balkcom scored all 9 Eagles points in the first quarter on 3s in a slow first 8 minutes and the two bridged their efforts in the second helping Jacobs push its lead to 16 at one point.
Phillips pumped in 9 in the quarter but Materna's putback and Balkcom's 3 helped Jacobs grab a 25-10 lead with 40 seconds left in the first half, a half where Huntley finished with 13 points on 4 free throws and 3 shots all coming from behind the arc.
The Red Raiders (6-17, 4-7) didn't score their first 2-point bucket until Chris Constantino's layup with 4:35 left in the third quarter. But by that point Balkcom's big block on one end led to a Schwartz layup and a foul, which was followed by a Krutwig putback on the next Eagles possession with 4:47 left that put Jacobs up 34-16.
"We just couldn't make anything," Huntley coach Will Benson echoed, as his team struggled from the field shooting 10-for-37. "Part of that is that (Jacobs) plays as good of a half court defense as anybody around here and so we knew it would be tough to score."
Costantino, Matt Seng, Andrew Fulcer led the Raiders with 6 points each as Huntley finished 4-for-14 behind the arc and 6-for-23 inside of it. Jacobs outrebounded the Raiders 33-13, part of a defensive effort Jacobs coach Jimmy Roberts was pleased with.
"Our guys are a ton defensively" Roberts said. "(But) we haven't seen a whole lot of defenses like that which is kind of interesting. And we just talked to our guys in the first half about recognizing - recognize what they're in, be smart, intelligent, experienced basketball players and I thought we did a pretty good job and I just wanted them to recognize it."