Chance to make Shootout statement slips away from top-ranked Blue Devils in loss to Knights

QUINCY — This one stings, not because of the outcome but more so because of the preparation.

When you’re the No. 1-ranked boys basketball team in the Illinois Class 4A state poll and you’re asked to defend your home court in a spotlight matchup in a ballyhooed event, you can’t coast through the week.

It’s what the Quincy High School players say they did.

“What I take from this is what you guys don’t see,” Blue Devils senior point guard Kamren Wires said after a 53-46 loss to Bishop O’Connell of Arlington, Va., on Saturday night in the seventh Quincy Shootout at Blue Devil Gym. “It’s what we do in practice. It’s how we’re coming every day into practice, competing and working hard.

“I feel like we didn’t do that this week. We didn’t show up everyday. Now we know as soon as Monday comes, we have to come in ready to work. We have to know everybody wants to beat us. They want to cut the head off the snake. We’re the snake. So we can’t take days off and we can’t take plays off.”

You can’t just flip a switch either.

“We didn’t lose the game on Saturday night,” Quincy coach Andy Douglas said. “We lost it on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in practice. That’s the biggest takeaway. Talk to our guys about that. We have to be better there. It’s a big week, but we’ve had big weeks before. We’ve had successful weeks.

“You can’t forget what the goal is, and I thought we did that this week.”

It saddled the Blue Devils (19-2) with their second loss this month, their first home loss since falling to Moline 57-46 on Feb. 3, 2023, and that nagging feeling they let an opportunity for a statement victory pass them by.

“We have to stay positive,” Quincy senior guard Bradley Longcor III said. “We’re going to watch film. We’re going to watch it individually. We’re going to watch it as a team. We’re going to learn from it. We’re going to slow things down and find ways to get better. I think it’s good for everyone to see there are things we can get better at.”

Yet, despite all the teeth gnashing over how they prepared, the Blue Devils gave themselves an opportunity to avoid a setback.

Trailing 28-24 at halftime after the Knights scored 11 first-half points off seven Blue Devils turnovers and Bishop O’Connell guard Darius Bivins hit a 3-pointer at the second-quarter buzzer, Quincy steadily chipped away at a deficit that ultimately grew to as many as nine points.

A 3-pointer by Longcor and a layin by Wires pulled the Blue Devils within 43-40 with 5:47 to play in regulation and the deficit was just 45-43 when Quincy gained possession a little more than as Keshaun Thomas rebounded a Bivins miss.

Calmly and collectively, the Blue Devils ran their offense with Longcor catching a pass off a split screen and launching an open 3-point attempt from just to the right of the top of the key. The ball caromed off the back of the rim, and the Knights turned the defensive rebound into a foul and free throws.

“We couldn’t have executed it any better,” Douglas said of the potential go-ahead possession. “That’s not a set play. That’s our offense. We created it the right way, and we had both guys open. We had a guy at the rim open, and we had Bradley open popping off. We executed it to perfection, but sometimes shots don’t drop. This was one of them.”

A packed gym with bottled up nervous energy may have rattled the rafters if the shot had fallen.

“It got loud in here,” Longcor said.

Douglas couldn’t remember a time the venerable facility had been so loud.

“A long, long while since that happened,” the coach said.

The players harkened it to playing in a 10,000-seat arena.

“It felt like a college game,” Longcor said. “A really, really good one. A high major one.”

The first half just didn’t mimic it. 

“It was the 50/50 balls they got to more than we did,” said Longcor, who led the Blue Devils with 17 points, six rebounds and three assists. “And the turnovers. We have to clean those things up.”

Those are toughness plays.

“I really want to say it was us playing a little softer than we normally do,” said Wires, who finished with 11 points and two assists. “At the end of the day, we have to be a tougher team. We preach and preach and preach, and Coach preaches, that toughness wins games just like that. It’s not saying we’re not tough. We just have to be tougher.”

Douglas felt the Blue Devils were tough enough, as demonstrated by the second-half rally that made it a one-possession game in the waning minutes.

‘You can’t say that we weren’t tough tonight,” Douglas said. “We were. We just fell a little short. When you look back at what it means to fall a little short, it’s a play here offensively, it’s a mishap here defensively. How your practices are determine the amount of mishaps you have in a game. We just weren’t as focused as we needed to be.”

That’s going to change.

“We have to keep our composure through everything,” Longcor said. “And we will.”