Relentless effort on defense and rebounding carries Raiders past Pirates

QUINCY — Add another tally to the Quincy Notre Dame boys basketball program’s victory total.

And much like many of the 1,500 victories celebrated in a pregame ceremony Saturday night at the Pit, this one took quite a bit of moxie.

The Raiders overcame 9-of-20 shooting from the free-throw line and an off-kilter effort in the paint with relentless rebounding and physical play defensively to outlast Hannibal 51-38.

“It all goes back to defense, and that’s what we preach,” QND junior guard Jackson Stratton said. “You’ll miss shots, but you can always play good defense. Our shots weren’t falling, but we kept going and kept playing good defense.”

That finally gave the Raiders the advantage after both teams got off to an erratic start.

Prior to the tip, representatives of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association presented QND with a commemorative plaque recognizing the program’s 1,500 all-time victory, which occurred late last season. It seemed to give the Raiders a boost as they scored the game’s first five points and held the Pirates scoreless the first 3 minutes, 18 seconds.

Back-to-back 3-pointers by the Pirates’ Courtland Watson and Aaris Stolte ended the drought, but neither team showcased any consistency and they went to the second quarter tied at 11.

“We were so jacked up in the first quarter,” Hannibal coach Marty Hull said. “We either turned it over or we scored because we were so fired up and so ready to play.”

The first three and a half minutes of the second quarter changed everything. The Raiders went on a 9-2 run with Blake Bozarth, Jake Hoyt and Stratton each hitting a 3-pointer.

QND made eight 3-pointers overall, but only nine shots inside the arc.

“The thing we’re really trying to emphasize to the guys is we’re getting shots. We’re getting good shots,” QND coach Kevin Meyer said after the Raiders won the 1,509th game in program history. “We charted a bunch of them last week, and they are good shots. They’re going to start falling. We’re getting point-blank shots, and those will start falling.”

Enough shots fell to hold Hannibal at bay.

Leading by six at halftime, the Raiders extended the advantage to 32-22 by the 4:20 mark of the third quarter on Stratton’s 3-pointer from the right wing. The Pirates chiseled away at the deficit, getting as close as four points on two different occasions.

“Our whole focus this week was competing,” Hull said. “I thought maybe as a coach I was making practice too easy. So our whole focus was getting after and competing all the time. I thought the kids competed the whole game and played their butts off.”

Hoyt answered the first time Hannibal drew close by nailing a pull-up jumper in the lane, and Stratton answered the second time with a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 6:07 to play.

Stratton made four 3-pointers and scored a game-high 18 points.

“My shot felt good,”  Stratton said. “It was a good night for me, and I’m glad because all of us are capable of having a good night. That’s why I love this team. We can all score 20 one night. We all can score two points and still contribute.

“Somebody is going to do good. It’s going to be somebody’s night.”

Stratton is the Raiders’ fourth different leading scorer in five games.

“It should be by committee,” Meyer said. “We’ve got a bunch of guys who can score, so we don’t need one guy scoring 25. If we can get four or five guys scoring 10 or 12, that’s what we need.”

Stolte led the Pirates with 15 points and Watson added 11, but the Raiders outrebounded them by 12 to help control the game.

“(Senior forward Calvin Lavery) does a good job of finding film and looking at stuff,” Meyer said. “He sent it out to us Wednesday night and was like, ‘Hey, we have to control the boards. Watch this and these guys are athletic, but we have to make sure we use our size to get the boards.’”

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