Dylan Hurckes' career-high 25 points help keep McHenry perfect in FVC

ALGONQUIN –Offered a free chicken sandwich from Jacobs' concession girls before he headed back into his McHenry basketball team’s locker room following a postgame interview, guard Dylan Hurckes accepted.

And why not? A hungry Hurckes grabbed one sandwich and then, when encouraged to do so by the generous girls, snagged the last one. A cardboard tray of the remaining, unbought hot dogs were given to the Warriors, too.

They had earned them.

Hurckes scored 21 of his game- and career-high 25 points in the second half, and McHenry led almost the entire night in beating Jacobs 55-45 Friday to improve to 18-2 and 10-0 in the Fox Valley Conference.

McHenry also improved to 5-0 with leading scorer and rebounder Adam Anwar sidelined with a broken left wrist. The Warriors have won seven in a row overall.

“He obviously has a huge role on our team, but we have other players who can step up,” Hurckes said. “We’ve definitely improved playing as a team since he’s been gone, and we’ve just been flying around on defense.”

The Warriors' zone defense and full-court pressure kept Jacobs (13-7, 5-5) from getting into a rhythm offensively, while at the other end Hurckes was in attack mode from almost the start. He sank four shots, including a 3-pointer, in the first quarter, then drained another four shots in the second in helping McHenry go into halftime up 29-22.

“I was just feeling good from the 3-point line, so I kept shooting,” said Hurckes, who made three 3s in the first half and hit another shot with his foot on the arc. “They slowed me down a little bit [in the second half], but I was just trying to get open shots for my teammates.”

Jacobs never got going offensively.

“They get up and pressure you, and it’s hard to get around that zone,” Golden Eagles senior guard Nolan Roper said. “They’re always going to go to the rim. They’re always going to play hard. It doesn’t matter who they have or who they don’t have.”

Roper led Jacobs with a career-high 19 points on 6-of-13 shooting, including 4 of 10 from 3-point range.

“Roper kept us in it,” coach Jimmy Roberts said after his Eagles lost their third FVC game in a row. “He shot it and played well, but that was it.”

Ben Jurzak added 14 points (two 3s) for Jacobs and helped limit Hurckes to four shots in the second half. But Jurzak and Samson Averehi (10 rebounds), who are the Eagles' top two scorers, shot a combined 5 of 23 from the floor. Yet, the hosts were within 39-33 with less than a minute left in the third quarter.

“They’re a high turn-you-over team,” Roberts said of the Warriors. “We had 14 turnovers for the game, which is actually a pretty fine number when you play them. It just comes down to putting the ball in the basket, and we didn’t have enough guys do that.”

Caleb Jett, who was averaging 23.5 points in McHenry’s past four games, scored 7 of his 16 points in helping the Warriors keep a double-digit lead for most of the fourth quarter. Jett added six rebounds and five steals.

Kyle Maness' only basket came on a runner in the lane with 3:38 left in the third and padded McHenry’s lead to 35-34.

“I thought the play of the game for us was when Kyle drove,” McHenry coach Corky Card said. “That was a big shot. We’re trying to get him to look to shoot more. We want him to be a little more aggressive like that.”

Hurckes shot 9 of 16 from the floor and 4 of 4 from the line. The 6-foot-3 veteran also had four rebounds and three steals.

“He played really well at both ends of the floor,” Card said. “What he’s done well since Adam’s been gone is not try to score more – obviously tonight he got into a good flow and was aggressive – but his turnovers to assists have been 2 to 1, and before that, he was about even.”