One-point loss to Blue Tigers to gnaw at Hawks knowing they were one play away

QUINCY — The decision to postpone Sunday’s Great Lakes Valley Conference matchup with Missouri-St. Louis due to impending weather was hardly ideal for the Quincy University men’s basketball team with no looming breaks in the schedule.

Leaving the Hawks extra days to chew on Friday night’s 70-69 loss to Lincoln made it even worse.

“It kind of eats at you,” QU junior guard El Sieger said.

It will until the Hawks play again next Thursday at Indianapolis.

“I hope it eats at them,” QU coach Brad Hoyt said. “I hope it eats at us. I hope people are not OK with that. I hope there is a sense that we need to develop into a group that expects to win those games.”

All it takes is one or two more plays to go in the Hawks’ favor.

“I do know the team that is the aggressor, the team that is on the same page moving with energy and pace is the team that is going to collect most of those moments,” Sieger said. “Basketball is a game of runs, and the team that has the energy, the team that has the gravity is the team that is going to be the most successful most of the time.”

In this case, Lincoln made plays on the defensive end to gain the edge.

After taking a 65-63 lead on a Sieger 3-pointer with 2:47 to play, the Hawks missed their next four shots and found themselves trailing 68-65 with nine seconds to play. Quincy’s Ethyn Brown split a pair of free throws, while Lincoln’s Mikey West buried a pair from the charity stripe for an insurmountable four-point advantage.

Sieger buried a 3-pointer with a second remaining, but the Hawks (6-6, 1-3 GLVC) didn’t touch the ball again.

“These are the type of games that really challenge you as a player and as a team,” said SIeger, who finished with 22 points and went 4 of 5 from 3-point range. “Once you see where you are measured at, that kind of makes you mad. It kind of eats at you. It’s going to allow us to take that and turn it into fuel for our practices.”

Rebounding will continue to be something stressed in practice.

The Blue Tigers, who rank second in the GLVC in offensive rebounding and third in total rebounding, owned a 37-30 edge on the boards, grabbed 13 offensive rebounds and scored 13 second-chance points. Ten of those second-chance points came in the first half when Lincoln built a 38-34 halftime edge.

“They lived on the glass,” Hoyt said.

They also made the Hawks guard every single second, scoring four times in the first half on shots less than five seconds before the shot clock would expire.

The Hawks answered by shooting 47.8 percent from 3-point range, including going 6 of 11 from the perimeter in the second half.

“It was like a title weight fight with punches being thrown from both sides,” Sieger said.

Ethyn Brown finished with 11 points and seven assists for the Hawks, while Mason Wujek had 10 points. West led the Blue Tigers (10-3, 2-3 GLVC) with 28 points and eight assists.

“I hope we have a personality that doesn’t come into games like this and hopes it works out,” Hoyt said. “We’re trying to create a personality here where we expect it to work out. And gosh dang it, I thought we played really, really hard. I thought the last seven minutes we really competed our tails off.

“That’s why it gnaws at you. Games like that come down to making great plays. We made some great plays. They made some great plays. They just made one more than we did.”

The Hawks have six days to think about that.

“You have to move on,” Sieger said. “We have to get back in the gym together and figure out what we have to do so that doesn’t happen again.”