‘Collinsville out-toughed us tonight’: Kahoks deny Blue Devils tourney title with physical play in critical stretches

COLLINSVILLE, Ill. — Decked out in his travel gear with his backpack slung over his shoulders, Ralph Wires emerged from the Quincy High School locker room with a basketball in hand and casually strolled onto the Vergil Fletcher Gym floor.

At the opposite end of the court from where Collinsville celebrated its championship of the 39th Collinsville Prairie Farms Holiday Classic, Wires flipped a left-handed shot at the rim from just a few feet away.

The ball hung on the iron briefly before rolling off and falling to the floor with a thud.

Exasperatedly, Wires grabbed the ball as it bounced back to him and turned to walk away. A hug from his mother awaited as did a long quiet ride home.

It had been that kind of night.

Hoping to win the program’s first holiday tournament title since 1997 and with it the possibility of being the new No. 1-ranked team in Class 4A when the Associated Press polls come out the first week of January, Wires and the Blue Devils were stymied by the Kahoks’ interior play and physicality in a 44-39 loss Friday night.

Due to that, Collinsville (16-0) may be the No. 1 team in Class 4A in the next poll.

“A quote that we say all the time is, ‘The game honors toughness,’” Quincy coach Andy Douglas said. “If you play with it, you’re giving yourself an opportunity to pull through in some of these games. If you play without it, then you’re putting yourself in a position we were in throughout the night.

“When we needed stops or when we needed the offense to click, it just wasn’t there. Collinsville out-toughed us tonight.”

It happened at the most crucial juncture.

The Blue Devils led 30-29 at the end of the third quarter, but they committed turnovers on four of their first five possessions of the fourth quarter. Quincy’s first points of the final frame didn’t come until Dom Clay scored off a backdoor cut with 4:57 to play.

Quincy went another three minutes without scoring, falling behind 40-32.

Despite that, there was still a chance at the end.

After the Kahoks’ Jamorie Wysinger, who was named the tournament MVP after a 12-point effort in the finale, missed a pair of free throws with 55.9 seconds left, the Blue Devils’ Bradley Longcor III nailed a 3-pointer nine seconds later to make it a three-point game.

Collinsville turned the ball over with 29.3 seconds to play. Quincy took a timeout and put the ball in Longcor’s hands. He worked free of his defender and drove the right side of the lane, where Chambers swatted his shot away.

“As soon as you see someone pick up their dribble, it’s instinct to go up and try and block it,” Chambers told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I felt my hands on it and I swatted it.”

Clay tried to corral the rebound, but he stepped on the sideline in front of the Blue Devils’ bench with 7.6 seconds left to give the Kahoks the possession. Nick Horras then made two free throws to seal Collinsville’s sixth title in tournament history, tying Lincoln for the most.

Chambers finished with 14 points and 15 rebounds, while helping the Kahoks own a 28-14 edge in points in the paint. He scored eight points over the final 10 minutes of the first half after Quincy forward Keshaun Thomas picked up his second foul and went to the bench.

Chambers turned into a facilitator in the second half, kicking out to Wysinger for a pair of 3-pointers.

The Blue Devils couldn’t answer that. Wires scored a team-high 10 points, but they shot just 31.9 percent from the field as a team and managed just six assists against 11 turnovers. It was arguably the most inefficient offensive effort of the season.

“Be upset. It should hurt,” Douglas said. “But when it comes time to get back on the court, we have to make sure we learn from it and move on in a positive way.”