Offensive struggles send QND boys into consolation round of small school bracket for first time

NORMAL, Ill. — Quincy Notre Dame boys basketball coach Kevin Meyer is convinced his team’s record should be much better than what it is.

“I told the guys I think that you’re a 10-1 team versus the 6-5 our record says,” Meyer said after the Raiders lost 55-50 to Pecatonica Wednesday night at Normal West High School in the opening round of the State Farm Holiday Classic. “But it doesn’t get any easier. We just keep talking about how you handle hard, and I think that’s part of the lesson.”

The Raiders are 0-4 in games during which they scored 50 points or less, and three of their five losses are by a combined nine points.

QND (6-5) will play at 2 p.m. Thursday at the Shirk Center on the Illinois Wesleyan University campus against Stanford Olympia, which lost 72-41 to No. 2 seed Normal U-High.

The Raiders, who have 10 top-four finishes since they first played at the State Farm Holiday Classic in 1999, are in the loser’s bracket for just the third time. QND went 2-2 in 2008, finishing 10th in the large school bracket, and 2-2 in 2009, finishing 11th in the large school bracket. Wednesday’s loss sends QND to the loser’s bracket in the small school bracket for the first time.

The Raiders had one of their best offensive quarters of the season in the first quarter. Three-pointers from Jace Allensworth, Connor Young and Tyler Bozarth helped QND race to a 21-13 lead. However, the Raiders also missed nine shots in the quarter, and several of them were from close range.

The Raiders allowed No. 7 seed Pecatonica (10-1) to go on a 14-1 run and eventually lead 33-29 at halftime.

“You want to shoot 75 to 80 percent from the two spots right underneath the basket and play through contact,” Meyer said. “That’s all stuff that we do at practice. I thought some of our looks were actually clean looks, but we just got a little flustered and changed our shot a little bit. We were expecting contact, and it didn’t come and that affected us.”

Notre Dame briefly led 34-33 in the third quarter after a 3-pointer by Alex Dance, and Jackson Connoyer’s driving layup at the 3:52 mark tied the score at 38.

Then the wheels fell off the QND bus. The Raiders didn’t score again in the third quarter, missing eight shots and turning the ball over twice. Pecatonica led 44-38 entering the fourth quarter.

QND got within three points on three occasions, and a 3-pointer by Allensworth got the Raiders as close as 52-50 with 50 seconds left. However, the Raiders didn’t score again, and Jaxson Diedrich made 3 of 4 free throws for Pecatonica to account for the final margin.

Allensworth was the only Raider in double figures with 19 points. Pecatonica (10-1), which was held 10 points below its worst scoring output this season, was led by Cooper Hoffman’s 21 points.

Notre Dame, which entered the game shooting 27 percent from 3-point range, missed 10 straight 3-point shots in the second half. The Raiders missed 19 of 28 shots during the final 16 minutes.

“Our offense just kind of got stagnant, and then we started to miss some shots,” Dance said. “We had a bunch of great shots, and we just couldn’t get them to go tonight. Those will go in the future.”

Meyer sure hopes he’s right.

“I told the guys in the locker room, and I know it sounds like sour grapes, but I thought that we lost,” he said. “It’s going to go down as a win for them, but I thought we lost that game. … We came back out (of halftime), got on a run, and then we just went kind of stagnant. It turned into ‘I need to score’ instead of ‘We need to score.’

“We had so many chances, point-blank chances, right at the rim, and the right guys were getting to the rim. They just didn’t fall, and this game is so fickle.”