Lockport defense suffocates Lincoln-Way Central in second half to pick up 21st win of the year

NEW LENOX – Tuesday saw school closures all around the area because of the freezing cold weather. Multiple games were postponed as the temperatures dropped to a windchill of minus 19 degrees in some areas.

Lockport and Lincoln-Way Central were determined to play their girls basketball game through rain, sleet, snow or, in this case, freeze. In the second half, however, it wasn’t the windchill that had the Knights' offense frozen, but the Porters' defense.

Lincoln-Way Central was held without a field goal for the entire third quarter and didn’t make its first shot of the second half until three minutes into the fourth. The Knights scored only eight points in the second half and made only two shots from the field, and the Lockport offense did enough to earn a 54-26 win.

While Lincoln-Way West’s victory over Andrew on Tuesday night kept it in second place in the SouthWest Suburban Conference, Lockport (21-3, 10-1) maintained its hold on the top spot with the win (the Warriors are now 8-1 in conference play).

It was also Lockport’s sixth victory in a row. It was the ninth time the Porters have held their opponent to less than 30 points and the fourth time in five games. The defensive intensity has become the Porters' main identity over the season, coach Darien Jacobs said.

“We don’t have one consistent scorer, so night in and night out we don’t know who’s going to lead us in points,” Jacobs said. “That’s why we focus on the one thing that we can keep consistent, and that’s our defense.”

Tuesday night that leading point scorer was Lucy Hynes with 18, while Alaina Peetz added 14. Regardless of how it’s happening, the Porters surely will take a 10-1 record and first place in the conference after going 0-8 in conference play the past two years. After winning 25 games in his first two seasons as head coach, Jacobs has Lockport at 21 wins with six games left in the regular season.

Plus, sometimes not relying on any one scorer can pay dividends in the long run.

“It’s really nice that there’s no pressure on any one of us to score,” Peetz said. “If one of us has an off game, someone else can pick it up.”

As for Lincoln-Way Central (8-15, 2-9) the rebuilding process continues for a team with just two seniors on its roster. The Knights have gone in the opposite direction from the Porters, as they went undefeated in conference play the past two years.

Still, there have been signs of improvement lately. After winning two games in a row, the Knights took Downers Grove North to overtime Saturday before falling and were tied with the Porters early in the second quarter. The entire first half was competitive as Kiya Newson-Cole (eight points) and Brooke Katzmann (nine points) picked up some of the slack in the absence of the injured Taylor Watt.

Coach Dave Campanile told his squad to keep that improvement, and not Tuesday’s score, in the forefront of their minds.

“We talked about staying the course,” Campanile said. “It was a tough night against a really good team. There’s a reason that team has got 21 wins now and are leading the conference. We have scraped and clawed, and this team has played hard for us. These last few games we’ve really started to turn a corner, and I don’t want that to get road blocked by one game.”

The game looked like it would be going in Lockport’s favor early as it led 7-0 before Katzmann ended Lincoln-Way Central’s four-minute scoreless streak to open the game. A 3-pointer by Newson-Cole with less than a minute left in the first cut the Knights' deficit to 11-9.

Katzmann tied the score at 11-all 15 seconds into the period before a 7-0 run by the Porters provided some distance. The Knights got back within 18-15 before layups by Peetz and Evelyn Ingram extended it to 22-15. Scarlett Abramowicz’s layup with three seconds left in the half got the deficit down to 22-18 for the Knights, but the second half was all Lockport.