‘The heart they showed tonight was truly special’: Blue Devils rally from double digit deficit, earn Dance’s 100th win as QHS coach

QUINCY — Brad Dance may not have seemed overly excited when the final buzzer sounded or when he got recognized following his 100th career win as the Quincy High School girls basketball coach on Thursday, but the fashion in which the Blue Devils helped Dance reach the century mark made him proud.

The Blue Devils trailed Rock Island Alleman by a dozen late in the first half and gave up 38 points in the first 16 minutes, but the Blue Devils rallied for a 66-53 Western Big 6 Conference win at the QHS gym.

“The heart they showed tonight was truly special,” Dance said.

The Pioneers led 38-26 before Quincy junior Madelyn Hamby knocked down a 3-pointer with 23 seconds left in the first half. After the Blue Devils forced a Pioneers turnover with 7.9 seconds left, Cameron Byquist drove from the right wing to the right block, split a pair of defenders and flipped a layup off the backboard to trim the Blue Devils’ deficit to seven at the break.

Byquist said the Blue Devils’ attitude in the locker room at halftime remained positive.

“Especially the last two games, our attitude in the locker room was like, ‘Oh, we’re down. We’ve got to do this and this, like what do we have to do to fix it?’” Byquist said. “This time we were like, ‘We got this. We know exactly what we need to do. There’s nothing else we need to do except we just need to be ourselves and play our game.’ We all came together and were like, ‘We go this. We’re not done yet.’ 

“It was really just our mentality going into the locker room, and we came out ready to go.”

The Blue Devils proved they were ready by limiting Alleman to 2-of-8 shooting, forcing six turnovers and outscoring the Pioneers 17-5 in the third quarter, which Byquist capped off with another buzzer-beating layup to push the Blue Devils lead to 48-43.

“Through the ups and downs, we were together,” said Byquist, who finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds. “We were helping each other off the floor. We were making sure each other’s heads were up. We all had our downfalls, but we had a lot that we contributed to the game, each one of us.”

Nobody contributed more in the scoring department than Jada Brown, who had 17 of her 30 points in the second half and made all eight of her free throw attempts in the fourth quarter to help the Blue Devils create separation.

“I just try to take a deep breath every now and then,” Brown said of her approach at the free-throw line. “You just have to do that sometimes.”

Dance commended Brown, who also had six rebounds, for her dogged determination and coolness under pressure.

“She’s got a nice touch from the line,” Dance said. “She’s pretty special on the offensive end, but even defensively, rebounding, she gets beat up every game and she just keeps coming back for more.”

Byquist’s contributions extend far beyond the box score.

“It’s the smile, the energy, lots of emotion,” Dance said. “A lot of times, even though she may not score 15 points like she did tonight, offensively she’s in it. She’s rebounding. She’s playing defense.”

Brown could feel the effects of Byquist’s infectious energy.

“Cameron played really well tonight,” Brown said. “She has such good energy, so I feel like everyone feeds off of that.”

Byquist embraces that role as the Blue Devils’ spark plug.

“It tells them we’re not done yet,” Byquist said. “If I have the energy to go out and get the rebounds and push through, everybody else does. It just really shows all of us girls we’re not done yet. We have so much potential and so much time left to score that we shouldn’t give up just because we’re down 10 or 12 points. That doesn’t mean the game’s over. We still have plays to make, stops to make. The game is not over until the last buzzer.”

The Blue Devils (16-10, 7-5 WB6) got four consecutive defensive stops to begin the second half, and freshman Khloe Nicholson drained a 3-pointer — her first points of the game — to get the Blue Devils within one with 5:30 left in the third quarter. Less than two minutes later, she splashed in another triple from the right corner to give the Blue Devils a 42-40 advantage, and the lead never changed hands the rest of the way.

“She’s doing a good job of looking for those shots,” Dance said of Nicholson, who finished with nine points. “We need another scorer. It just makes it that much harder for them to guard inside if we have Madelyn shooting, Myley (Longcor) shooting, Cam scoring and also Khloe scoring.”

Nicholson also had five steals and played a key role in limiting Alleman’s Megan Hulke, who made six 3-pointers in the second quarter and had 20 points in the first half, to five points in the second half, three of which came on a triple with 32 seconds left and the Pioneers (21-8, 8-4 WB6) down by 12. Adalynn Voss, who made two 3-pointers and had eight points in the first quarter, had just seven points after that.

“We knew they had two girls who could really shoot,” Byquist said. “We came out in man, which really isn’t us. We usually come out in zones. It’s just our mentality. We wanted it more this game. We really did. Especially Myley and Khloe did a great job, and I’m really proud of them.”

That mentality combined with Brown’s 30-point effort, Byquist’s endless supply of energy, Nicholson and Hamby’s timely shooting and a stout second-half defensive effort melded together to create a memorable milestone win for Dance.

“It’s nice to get the 100th win in a game like this,” Dance said.

Even if he may not show a lot of emotion.

“He’s going to keep a straight face, but it feels great,” Byquist said.