Helias capitalizes on swing moment in fourth quarter, fends off QND’s comeback

QUINCY — The pass was perfect and the shot was open. 

“Everything was right there,” Quincy Notre Dame boys basketball coach Greg Altmix said.

Everything except the tide-turning moment it was set up to be.

The Raiders had cut an 18-point, second-half deficit to seven in the early stages of the fourth quarter of Friday’s affair with Jefferson City Helias and methodically worked their offense to the point when senior guard Alex Dance found junior guard Jace Allensworth on the baseline with an uncontested 3-point attempt. 

But Allensworth missed, the Crusaders raced down the floor and got an open triple of their own and senior guard Sam Lopez didn’t miss. It turned what would have been a four-point QND deficit into a 10-point Helias lead.

The Crusaders never looked back in defeating the Raiders 57-45 in the opening night of the KHQA/American Family Insurance Superfan Shootout at The Pit.

“Once you miss that open look, you don’t get the putback, and you’re going down the other end, as a coach you just got that bad feeling in your stomach,” Altmix said. “We had a couple opportunities, and we weren’t able to take advantage.”

QND junior forward Jackson Connoyer said one play didn’t decide the outcome.

“We had a lot of good shots that just weren’t falling,” Connoyer said. “(Helias) hit their shots. Nothing you can really do about that.”

The Raiders’ offensive struggles were noticeable, statistically speaking. QND (13-8) finished 19 of 54 from the field (35.1 percent), made only 2 of 15 3-point attempts (13.3 percent), and turned the ball over 18 times.

The Crusaders’ zone defense played a role, too.

“It’s a unique zone that a lot of people don’t see,” said Helias coach Joe Rothweiler, a Hannibal native. “It looks like a 2-3 sometimes, and morphs into other stuff. It can be tricky to figure out at times, and our guys did a really good job of executing it.”  

Helias (12-9) ran its winning streak to five while using its muscle inside, notably 6-foot-5, 230-pound junior forward Alex Wood, on the offensive end. Wood, a tight end/defensive end who is generating interest from D-I college football programs, finished with 10 points and 10 rebounds, and was named the game’s MVP.

“He’s getting better and better every day,” Rothweiler said of Wood. “The physicality has always been there. He’s been a big kid forever, but he’s starting to get his feet under him. He can make a couple post moves that he couldn’t make last year.”

Altmix thought the Raiders were allowing Wood to get too deep when he caught it on the block in the first half. QND switched it up in the second half and tried to front Wood, but it led to defensive positioning issues on the back end. Wood had seven of his 10 points in the third quarter.

“It just kind of seemed like that way all night, there was just one player that was out of position and contributed to us not being able to make the right play,” Altmix said.

QND had a five-point lead in the latter stages of the first quarter, but Helias went on a 10-0 run to take an 18-13 advantage three minutes into the second quarter and pushed the lead to 25-19 at halftime. The Crusaders doubled it and went on top 47-35 after three quarters.

“I think it was our intensity. We kind of let up a little bit,” Connoyer said. “We had turnovers where we probably shouldn’t have in their zone. We had guys open that just didn’t hit (shots).”

Allensworth led the Raiders with 13 points, including 11 in the second half, Connoyer added 11, and junior guard Beau Eftink pitched in seven points.

Along with Wood, the Crusaders had three players finish in double figures as junior guard Rowen Buffington had 13 points and junior guard Logan Hillman wound up with 11.

The Raiders are forced to quickly flip the script as they host Mexico (Mo.) in Saturday’s nightcap of the Superfan Shootout. The Bulldogs (14-5) are receiving votes in Class 4 in the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association state rankings and have won six games in a row. Mexico has beaten Hannibal and Palmyra, two teams that QND lost to earlier in the season, by a combined 89 points.

“I think we’ll probably see a little bit different look from Mexico than what we saw from Helias,” Altmix said. “Another big, physical, good team and another opportunity for us to learn, see if we can get better. These are the types of games we’re going to see in the postseason.”