Trojans' Girls Basketball Roll in Regional Opener

Even at this time of year in postseason, there is always room for improvement.

Cary-Grove’s girls’ basketball team could say that after missing several lay-ups and close shots Tuesday night in the IHSA Class 4A Dundee-Crown Regional semifinal against Larkin.

After with all those missed shots, the top-seeded Trojans had enough to defeat the fourth-seeded Royals 50-19 in Carpentersville for their 12th straight win.

Cary (25-3) will play No. 2 seed Streamwood Thursday night in the regional championship at 7:30 p.m.

C-G came out strong again, scoring nine of the first 11 points of the game and took a 17-7 lead after one quarter of play.

Cary began the second quarter on a 6-0 run as Larkin could not find the bottom of the basket, not making a shot for 14 minutes of play during the middle part of the game and Cary finished the half with a 26-9 lead and added a 10-0 run to start the third quarter to put the game completely away.

Claire Jakubicek scored 13 points to lead Cary while Meg Straumann added nine. Jakubicek said that the shots will fall again inside, hopefully sooner than later.

“I honestly think it was just one of those nights,” Jakubicek said. “I think in the next game and bigger games coming up that we will hit those shots. We just need to concentrate more.”

Straumann added that nights like that can’t happen all the time.

“If it was going to happen, we’re glad that it happened now and we‘re just hoping that games come where we just stick the bunnies,” Straumann said. “We’re going to hit the outside shots that aren’t contested.  We just have to keep shooting the ball, they’ll fall.”

One advantage of the big win was the fact it allowed Cary’s bench of Joslyn Nicholson, Alyssa Lee, Jennifer Perkins, Megan Leisten and Hannah Phillips to play the entire fourth quarter and it is something that may come into play later on according to coach Rod Saffert.

“Those two sophomores of ours (Leisten and Phillips) don‘t play a whole lot, they just practice with us so we have ten and they did an amazing job for us,” Saffert said. “We talked about it before the game, the goal was everybody gets to play. How much? I don’t know. The other goal was keep everyone healthy. It’s only going to help the rest of these guys and we are going to need some of these guys down the road.”

Jakubicek and Straumann also advanced in the three-point shootout with Jakubicek making eight out of 15 and Straumann making seven.