DeKalb’s Naz Dean spent most of her Friday night smothering Sycamore’s Sadie Lang and keeping her well under her 18-point per game scoring average.

But when Dean picked up her third foul in the third quarter and headed to the bench, Lang made two quick layups to push Sycamore’s lead to double digits for the first time.

It proved crucial in the Spartans’ 38-26 win over DeKalb, reclaiming the traveling trophy at the NIU Convocation Center.

“It’s amazing to win this year, after last year,” Lang said. “Especially missing Quinn [Carrier to an injury] last year and her coming back, our energy was high. It was just amazing.”

The Spartans (16-9) led by as many as eight points in the first half in the low-scoring contest, but the Barbs (11-15) cut it to 18-15 on a layup by Zora Watts two minutes into the third quarter.

DeKalb didn’t score again for more than six minutes. For the first four minutes of that stretch, Sycamore only pushed the lead back to eight. But Dean picked up her third foul, then Lang made her two layups for a 27-15 lead at the end of the third quarter. The game was never within single digits again.

“That was a big momentum change,” Lang said. “It got our momentum up even more and gave us the confidence to keep going and keep pushing that energy.”

Both teams played lockdown defense throughout the contest. Lang and Carrier, usually deadly from 3-point range, hit a combined three 3-pointers.

For DeKalb, Olivia Schermerhorn, another strong 3-point shooter, didn’t hit her first 3-pointer until the closing seconds. Schermerhorn led the Barbs with 10 points and DeKalb only scored 11 points in the second half.

Sycamore coach Adam Wickness said the Spartans switched off on defense, but Lang was defending Schermerhorn primarily.

“She’s really good when she goes to her left hand, and we wanted to make her go to her right hand as much as possible,” Wickness said. “When she did get to her left hand she scored. It’s just one of those things where we needed to reinforce the thing we wanted to do, and we did a really good job of that.”

Lang finished with a game-high 15 points, seven of which came in the second half with Dean on the bench with three and then four fouls later in the fourth, when Lang hit her second 3-pointer of the game.

“Naz has been on all of the opposition’s best players and she’s done a phenomenal job with that,” DeKalb coach Bradley Bjelk said. “She’s got such a motor and just fantastic conditioning. She’s just doing a great job of using her speed and athleticism to be a pesky defender.”

Carrier finished with 11 points and a game-high six rebounds. DeKalb forced 21 turnovers in the loss, including four steals for Patrick.

Patrick was the main defender on Carrier, who was also averaging about 18 points per game.

“Our game plan was to try to make [Lang and Carrier] have a tough night,” Bjelk said. “A couple times we got caught helping off one or the other and didn’t rotate and left them some pretty makeable baskets.”

Patrick finished with six points and six rebounds.

DeKalb beat Sycamore twice last year, including in the Convocation Center. That took the trophy back from the Spartans after it spent 10 straight years in Sycamore.

“It’s good for it to be home,” Wickness said. “The girls all had this game circled. It was one of our season goals to make sure we brought that trophy back to our place because we had it for so long. Hats off to DeKalb last year for beating us twice, but I knew that our girls were not going to let that happen again.”