Raiders salt away road victory with stellar effort at free-throw line

CARTHAGE, Ill. — A team that hadn’t been the most efficient from the free-throw line is figuring out how to use the charity stripe to its advantage.

It paid off down the stretch Tuesday night.

The Quincy Notre Dame boys basketball team, which was collectively shooting 59 percent from the line, made 7 of 10 free throws in the fourth quarter and 20 of 25 overall in holding Illini West at arm’s length with a 57-45 victory.

“This is a good shooting group, and I think we’re finally starting to find our groove,” QND coach Kevin Meyer said. “Some of that comes from practice. We changed some things up with our repetition in practice.”

Specifically, Meyer made missing free throws in practice have consequence.

“If we’re shooting 1-and-1s and you miss, you have to run,” Meyer said. “It’s a lot more fun to make them than it is to run. So they’re figuring that out a little bit.”

More importantly, it makes the Raiders (13-7) want to shoot them when it matters.

“At the end of the game, they step up with confidence,” Meyer said. “They run to the free-throw line, get the ball and knock them down. That’s a huge mindset in my book that you run to the free-throw line and you’re there saying ‘Give me the ball’ as opposed to walking up there unsure. 

“Our guys did that tonight. They wanted the ball at the end. They wanted to salt that thing away.”

It wasn’t just one player. Four different QND players made free throws in the fourth quarter with point guard Jake Hoyt going 3 of 4. Overall, six Raiders went to the line and made shots with junior forward Jake Wallingford going 6 of 7 as part of a 14-point performance.

Braden Sheffield and Jackson Stratton were each perfect from the line.

“That was huge,” Meyer said. “The free-throw shooting was big for us.”

Leading by 11 at halftime, QND’s advantage dwindled to six by the end of the third quarter as Illini West’s Max Richardson scored eight of his nine points in that frame. The Chargers’ Nolan Deitrich hit three 3-pointers in the second half to help keep it close, but the Raiders didn’t allow any second-chance points in the final five minutes.

“We finally boarded a little there,” Meyer said. “We got some big rebounds at the end. And we ran some good offense at the end.”

It gives the Raiders some momentum going into a lengthy break.

They don’t play again until facing Northeast Cairo (Mo.) on February 4 as part of the SuperFan Shootout at the Pit.

“The way I’m looking at this and trying to approach it is it’s good and it’s good because there aren’t a lot of breaks once you reach February,” Meyer said. “This is a good chance for us to regroup, get off of our legs a little bit, have some mental practices and refresh a little bit. Then we go back out and execute for those last eight games.”