First-quarter field goal drought not enough to knock Blue Devils from unbeaten ranks

QUINCY — The field goal drought lasted more than eight minutes, but it wasn’t long enough to make the Quincy High School boys basketball players fret.

“Nah,” junior forward Keshaun Thomas said. “We just had to fight our way back.”

They had done so before, albeit on a bigger stage facing more dire circumstances.

So an 11-5 deficit at the end of the first quarter Tuesday night against Webster Groves didn’t seem so daunting, no matter how off-kilter the offense was. Quincy didn’t make a field goal in the opening eight minutes, going 0 of 7 from the field and 0 of 4 from 3-point range.

The Blue Devils trailed 11-1 with 2:30 remaining in the quarter, which was reminiscent of the 14-0 deficit they faced four minutes into last February’s Class 4A regional championship game against Collinsville.

“It was pretty much the same thing,” Thomas said. “We were playing ISO ball, forcing shots, not doing our thing. (Webster Groves) was making every shot left and right. We just had to slow it down, gain our composure and play our game. That’s what we did.”

Bradley Longcor III ended the drought with a 3-pointer from the top of the key 25 seconds into the second quarter. Two minutes later, they had the lead. By halftime, they were ahead by 10 points. Ultimately, they won 61-51 at Blue Devil Gym.

“Everybody was part of it, everybody can score, everybody moves the ball, everybody contributes,” Thomas said after the Blue Devils improved to 8-0 after their final home game in 2023. “It’s why we’re never out of it. It’s why we know we can overcome anything.”

A full quarter without a field goal is something significant to overcome.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that, at least never on our end anyway,” Quincy coach Andy Douglas said. “It was rough. Webster Groves did a great job of taking us out of what we wanted to do, and we weren’t disciplined enough in the first quarter to execute our stuff.”

It nearly made QHS assistant coach Bruce Bonness eat his words.

“He’s always saying, ‘Defense is always wrong,’” Douglas said. “He’ll say, ‘No matter what they do, with the way we run our offense, the defense is always wrong.’ Instead of getting to the next level of our attack and pressuring their defense, we settled for shots. We had to run our stuff and prove no matter what defense they played it was going to be wrong.”

Once it happened, it came in waves.

A Camden Brown dunk and two Thomas free throws gave the Blue Devils a 12-11 lead with 5:34 to play in the first half. After a Webster Groves 3-pointer stopped a 13-1 run, Quincy’s Tyler Sprick hit a baseline jumper and followed it up 20 seconds later with a 3-pointer in transition for a 23-15 advantage.

It forced Webster Groves (3-2) to take a timeout with 2:25 remaining in the first half, but the damage was done.

“When the ball moves, good things happen,” Douglas said. “We can’t be a team that thinks it’s going to win games just on 1-on-1 action. With the weapons that we have, we can attack. When you go into battle, you’re not just using one weapon. You’re using a plethora of them.

“We have to make sure the ball moves, doesn’t stick and keeps our offense going so all of our weapons get used.”

In the first half, no one scored more than five points individually as they shared the scoring load.

In the second half, Thomas took over. The 6–foot-5 forward dominated the post, finishing with 24 points and 11 rebounds and further establishing himself as the force the Blue Devils’ offense needs to run through.

“He was huge, just huge,” Douglas said. “He did a little bit of everything like normal. He does a phenomenal job of not playing just offense. On defense, he gives us a different level of toughness as well. He was a difference maker tonight.”