ACIT takes down EHT for sixth straight win to start the season

By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
MAYS LANDING — There was plenty of frustration to go around on Thursday night at ACIT, some of it bad, some of it good. It depended on what color uniform you were wearing.
Kayla Sykes, a senior guard for the host RedHawks, was a little frustrated that her 3-pointer in the waning seconds rimmed out. Had it gone, she would have reached 1,000 career points in dramatic fashion. Instead, she’ll have to wait until ACIT hosts Cedar Creek on Monday at 5:30 p.m. for another shot at becoming just the second player in program history to reach the milestone.
Egg Harbor Township, wearing the road black uniforms, were frustrated in a much different way, as the Eagles continued to claw back from deficits time after time, only to see things fall apart in the final few minutes as ACIT pulled away for a 45-32 victory, its sixth straight to start the season.

“Honestly, I was thinking about it throughout the day, but I knew I had to focus on the game first before my 1,000th point. The game comes first, the points come later,” Sykes said. “I’m a little bit mad but I’m glad we won the game; well, not mad, everything happens for a reason, so I’ll get it next time.”
“She kind of looked like she had a lot of energy right away and I told her to settle down. The game plan was to just play our regular game. This was a big game, and winning comes first before her points, and she believes the same thing,” said RedHawks coach Jason Vander Ryk. “Her points were here and there, and I finally went up to the scorer’s table and saw she was three points away. We were up by 12 or so and I said, ‘hey, let’s get a three off.’ It looked like it was going in. She had an excellent look. It would have been great, but as a team I’m happy they stayed focused. The focus wasn’t on getting Kayla points, the focus was on winning this game.”
EHT (3-3, 0-2) struggled to score early, but still only trailed 7-5 heading into the second quarter. But every time the Eagles got close, ACIT (6-0, 3-0) had an answer. The RedHawks scored three straight baskets to take a 17-11 lead, then Julianna Montero scored in transition a few minutes later to stretch the lead to 22-11. But the Eagles battled back, getting a big 3-pointer from sophomore point guard Lauren Baxter, who hit four in the game and finished with 20 points, and a jumper from Natasha Iqbal to shave the lead down to 22-17 heading into halftime.
The RedHawks got some solid play from Montero, as well as players like Jakyra Williams, Ceani Jackson and Grace Speer in the second half. Those four combined to finish with 30 points.
“Every shot doesn’t go in, but if I had it, I took it and if not I dished it into the paint,” Montero said. “We just had to keep playing. We couldn’t give up, we had to win.”

“They stepped up a lot. They’ve started to come along more. I know we get on them a lot in practice, but we just want them to go strong because (defenders) are coming after us, so we want them to be big in the paint,” Sykes said. “We’re taking it game-by-game and just focusing on what we need to work on, and be humble throughout every game and every play. We need to hustle on every play, and we’ve been talking about being strong with the ball, being patient and not rushing everything.”
EHT continued to battle back in the second half, eventually getting to within 35-32 with less than four minutes remaining, but ACIT went on a 10-0 run to close the game out.
“EHT is playing very well. They are tough, they’re gritty, they hustle — we knew it was going to be a tough game and it went back and forth. I’m proud of my girls, they made some mistakes early but bounced back from it. They know it’s going to be a 32-minute fight (every night) and they know there are going to be a couple of minutes here or there where things don’t go their way, but they don’t hang their heads. They keep plugging away and doing what they need to do. Momentum is everything in girls basketball, and every time EHT got close we hit a big shot to keep that separation, that breathing room that you need to keep calm. We responded to their shots, which was huge. If we don’t do that, who knows how the game turns out,” Vander Ryk said. “We talked in practice yesterday about limiting mistakes and handling pressure, and I think we did that. We’re just going to keep building. What I took away from this game was, even when things look like they’re not going our way in a certain stretch, we always seem to bounce back, and that’s important. We’ve won some games when my team was down until the final minute, so they are showing me that they don’t have any quit and they’re not getting rattled.”
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays