South Elgin falls just short in sectional loss to Cary-Grove

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South Elgin's Becca Smith walks off the court as Cary-Grove players celebrate their sectional semifinal win Tuesday in McHenry. | John Konstantaras~For Sun-Times Media

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Updated: March 28, 2012 10:19PM

It only seemed appropriate for Cary-Grove’s Olivia Jakubicek to be at the foul line Tuesday with the game at stake following yet another offensive rebound.

After all, the Trojans had owned the glass after the first quarter, and in the end her two foul shots following her offensive rebound with 7.1 seconds left broke a tie and gave Cary-Grove a 49-47 victory over South Elgin in the semifinals of the McHenry Class 4A Sectional.

“We played them last year in the third game of the season and outrebounded them 39-22 and it was almost a carbon copy,” said Cary-Grove coach Rod Saffert. “We told them that was going to be a key: we have to control boards and we have to take it inside.”

Jakubicek had hauled in the rebound after Megan Leisten’s missed foul shot and appeared to step out of bounds, then got the call as she tried to drive to the hoop near the baseline.

“I wasn’t exactly sure how much time was on the clock, so I figured we had to get a shot up,” said Jakubicek, who scored a game-high 17 points. “So I felt I had to go to the basket and score and they ended up calling a foul.

“It was kind of an out-of-control play and I wasn’t sure which way it was going to go. They could have called it either way.”

After Jakubicek’s free throws, Loyola-bound Becca Smith got the ball against a double team as time ran down and tried a fallaway 18-footer at the buzzer. It just scraped the bottom of the rim and fell to the floor, and Cary-Grove survived to play DeKalb in Thursday’s 7:30 p.m. championship game.

Cary-Grove outboarded South Elgin 45-27, including 39-20 over the final three quarters. The Trojans scored 20 second-chance points.

“That’s been our bugaboo all year,” South Elgin coach Tim Prendergast said. “And it came back to bite us. The officiating, when you get a close game, you’re not always going to have calls go your way, so that’s tough.

“It seemed like down the stretch, especially, we didn’t rebound. One girl was trying to do the work down there and obviously it needs to be done collectively.”

Cary-Grove (21-8) got 16 points and six rebounds from Paige Lincicum and seven points and nine rebounds from Joslyn Nicholson before they fouled out late in the game. Jakubicek had 12 rebounds.

South Elgin’s Smith, bothered by leg injuries, was held to 10 points and the Storm (19-11) got 11 points from Savanah Uveges and Kennede Miller to stay stride-for-stride with the Trojans down the stretch.

“I give all the credit to their defense,” Smith said. “They played great defense on us tonight and we just never got in the flow.

“We hadn’t really been trapped a lot this season, so it was new for us. We had a lot of trouble with that in the beginning.”

Miller had a three-point play with 1:23 left for the sixth lead change of the fourth quarter, and ninth of the second half. But Cary-Grove’s Alyssa Lee scored her only points of the game for a putback and the game’s last lead change.

Miller came back with 1-of-2 at the line when fouled with 44 seconds left to knot the score at 47 and set up Jakubicek for the foul shots.

“The importance of those free throws was definitely going through my mind,” Jakubicek said. “But every time I step up to the line I think the same thing — that it’s going in.”

Prendergast was upbeat despite the loss.

“We’re on to something here,” he said. “We had a lot of young kids playing tonight — three sophomores starting — and there are a lot of young kids coming up. Sometimes you have to go through things like this to get to the next level.”