Raiders use press to overwhelm Rock Falls while finally cranking up offense in State Farm Holiday Classic opener

NORMAL, Ill. — Quincy Notre Dame boys basketball coach Kevin Meyer gave his Raiders a shiny new toy under their Christmas tree last week.

It looked Monday afternoon like they had a lot of fun playing with it for the first time.

The press.

The Raiders used their 1-2-2 three-quarter court trap and a swarming man-to-man full-court defense sparingly in the first nine games of the season, but both of them overwhelmed Rock Falls in a 61-28 victory in the first round of the small-school bracket at the State Farm Holiday Classic at Normal West High School.

QND (6-4), the No. 7 seed, advances to Tuesday’s quarterfinal round and will play at 6:30 p.m. at the Shirk Center against No. 2 seed St. Joseph-Ogden, which held off scrappy Tri-Valley 51-45 in its opener. 

The Raiders forced five turnovers in the first quarter and held the Rockets to 2-for-8 shooting to take a 16-5 lead. Sloppy play in the first five minutes of the second quarter allowed Rock Falls (4-8) to clim within 18-10, but the Raiders closed the half with a 9-2 run.

QND then blew the game open in the third quarter. Five layups on their first six possessions, many of them coming in transition after forcing a poor Rock Falls shot, put the Raiders ahead 37-14. The lead grew to 46-20 by the end of the third quarter.

The turbo clock was activated for the final six minutes when, after Jackson Stratton missed a breakaway layup, Jake Wallingford swooped in for a two-handed putback dunk to make the score 54-24. It brought the bench to its feet and several smiles to the faces of a team that had struggled offensively for the past three weeks.

“I was trailing behind Jackson and told him ‘off the backboard,’” Wallingford said with a big grin. He keeps saying he’s passing it, but I mean, I don’t know. But it was still awesome.”

The Raiders dominated the second half, making nine of 11 shots in the third quarter and 26 of 47 field goals (55.3 percent) overall. Meanwhile, they limited Rock Falls to 6 of 25 shooting in the second half and six turnovers. The Rockets missed 35 out of 46 shots and turned the ball over 16 times. Their leading scorer, Gavin Sands, had only seven points.

“We’re trying to push tempo, offensively and defensively,” Meyer said. “We have the athletes. They have to be willing to go out and press. They got comfortable in our in our ball press today. I think we can really go out and push guys in tempo, and I thought they did a good job of that today.

“One of the things we saw when we looked through our stats through the first seven or eight games was we’re not getting a lot of steals. We weren’t getting a lot of deflections. That meant we were staying back. With the athleticism we have, we should be out there in passing lanes. Part of it staying connected on the backside to help the helper. We’ve talked about that ‘til we’re blue in the face. … Today’s performance has to be the blueprint. You have to be able to repeat it. It has to happen again tomorrow.”

The Raiders entered the tournament averaging 13.7 3-point attempts per game, but they took only eight on Monday (making two). 

After scoring 137 points in their first two games, the Raiders have averaged 45.7 points in their last seven games. Monday’s output against Rock Falls was its highest scoring total in eight games.

“We’re a team that wants to get out and run,” said Wallingford, who led QND with 14 points.  “We need to turn up the tempo. Over the past week, we’ve been practicing our pressing defense and just getting after it. 

“After the past couple of games (losses to Quincy High School and Monmouth-Roseville), we haven’t been scoring much or playing good defense. But after that week of practice and really getting after it, it’s been a grind but I’d say it turned out pretty good.”

“We had a good little talk after last week’s games and said, ‘What do you want your identity to be?’” Meyer said. “It was talking about intensity coming out and throwing a few punches defensively. They did that, and it just kick-started us. When you talk and you fly around with energy, it’s contagious.”

Stratton and Braden Sheffield both added nine points for the Raiders. Alex Connoyer had seven points in his first start, and Blake Bozarth and Josh Bocke had six each off the bench.