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CARY – Jacobs coach Jimmy Roberts was looking for inspiration and advice following his team’s six-game losing skid.
The Golden Eagles were 13-5 overall at one point this season, then watched their record uncharacteristically plummet to 13-11 prior to Friday’s Fox Valley Conference road matchup against Cary-Grove.
So Roberts exchanged messages with former Jacobs coach and legend Jim Hinkle, whose teams racked up over 500 combined wins during his career.
“We’ve been in a funk,” Roberts said. “We’ve played some good teams. Played OK at times, struggled at times. We hadn’t been shooting it well.
“Coach Hinkle sent me a text message and said, ‘Tough times don’t last, tough people do.’ And tonight in the second half, we got tough.”
Indeed they did.
After shooting just 25.9% (7 for 27) in a defensive struggle that saw them deadlocked 18-18 at half, Roberts' players shined in the second half.
The result was a 58-49 win for the Golden Eagles (14-11, 6-7 FVC) who avenged a pair of losses earlier in the season to the Trojans.
Senior Nolan Roper scored Jacobs' first nine third-quarter points and finished with a team-high 20 points as the Golden Eagles caught fire down the stretch.
They shot 8 of 13 in the third, then a perfect 3 of 3 in the fourth quarter for a combined 11 of 16 in the final 16 minutes.
“We went into the locker room at halftime and just talked about playing with energy,” Roper said. “Our shots weren’t falling. But we felt like if we picked up the intensity and stayed aggressive, that would start to change.”
That aggression wasn’t limited to scoring points. Jacobs pulled down 12 offensive rebounds, led by Carson Goehring, who had five of them off the bench.
His junior teammate, Samson Averehi (11 points, 11 rebounds), notched the game’s lone double-double, with four of his boards coming on the offensive end.
“We stand by the motto P.E.T.,” Averehi said. “Which means passion, enthusiasm, toughness. Our goal down the stretch was to get better looks.
“Our other goal was to be active without the ball and crash the glass. Anything to get back to playing with the same energy and focus we played with to start the season.”
Jacobs also sank 12 of its 14 fourth-quarter foul shots, including all six in the final 47 seconds after the Trojans (15-11, 5-8 FVC) cut it to a one-possession game at 50-47.
Averehi drained 5 of 6 foul shots in the fourth, while Roper sank all four of his.
Ben Jurzak (10 points, four rebounds, three assists) made three of his four shots from the free-throw line in the fourth.
“Just great to see our guys play the way we know we’re capable of playing as the moments got bigger and bigger in the final minutes,” Roberts said.
To their credit, the Trojans refused to quit.
They led briefly four separate times in the first, second and third quarters, but lost the lead for good at 23-21 when Roper caught fire for Jacobs to open the second half.
C-G fell behind by eight in the fourth, then cut Jacobs' lead to three points three times in the final five-plus minutes.
But the Golden Eagles finished the final 47 seconds with an 8-2 flurry to seal things.
It’s not as if C-G shot poorly as the game progressed, either. After going 5 of 19 from the field in the first half, the Trojans shot 5 of 8 in the third, then 7 of 14 in the final eight minutes.
Adam Bauer had a team-best 20 points, five rebounds and two blocks, and AJ Berndt (13 points) did his best to keep his team alive, scoring 10 in the final eight minutes.
It just wasn’t enough to overcome Jacobs' hot shooting and second chances.
“Jacobs is a very physical team, and if you don’t box out, it can really cost you,” Berndt. “They just outworked us in that department, and that was the difference
“We have a tough conference game coming up against Crystal Lake South on Friday, so we have to have two great days of practice, and hopefully take our anger and energy into that game and be more focused.”