Cary Girls Win Twice in McHenry

This weekend brought an opportunity for Cary-Grove’s girls’ basketball team to play without one of their better players in junior Olivia Jakubicek, who is playing in an AAU tournament, as the Trojans began play in the McHenry Lady Warriors Shootout.

Cary found a scoring threat for the day in fellow junior Joslyn Nicholson, who scored 25 points in a 57-32 win over Crystal Lake Central and the Trojans finished the day with a 32-30 overtime win against Dundee-Crown. 

Nicholson scored 19 of her points in the first half as Cary jumped out to a 27-18 halftime lead and was able to extend it in the second half, outscoring the Tigers 30-14 over the final 20 minutes.

Nicholson said that the Central defense helped give her scoring chances.

“They weren’t playing hard defense but every time I got the pass, I would just shoot because I have been working really, really hard recently on my outside shot and it was just going in,” Nicholson said.

Nicholson added that wins without Jakubicek help build more team confidence.

“With Olivia here, we are a strong team and even without her here, we are still a strong team,” Nicholson said. “We don’t just depend on one player, we depend on everybody. There are 11 girls on the team, not just one star player so we just work with everybody to make sure everyone gets enough playing time.”

In the second game of the day, Cary struggled to score early in falling behind 13-10 at the half to the Chargers.

The Trojans rallied in the second half and the two teams battled back and forth throughout the final minutes and with Cary trailing by two with time running out, Alyssa Barbaro hit a 17-footer to tie the game at the buzzer to force overtime, where the first team to score would win the game.

After Dundee-Crown didn’t score on their possession, Paige Lincicum would able to get to the glass and made a lay-up to win the game for C-G.

Lincicum and Nicholson each finished with a game-high nine points in the win to move Cary to 2-0 in pool play.

The Trojans will finish pool play Saturday at 1 p.m. against Antioch before going into bracket play to finish the tournament Saturday afternoon and on Sunday.