‘They just kept battling and battling’: Raiders dig out of 13-point hole, rally to beat state-ranked Panthers

MONROE CITY, Mo. — When their team allows the first 13 points of a game, a basketball coach may be inclined to make significant adjustments.

But even when the Quincy Notre Dame boys basketball team fell behind by a baker’s dozen in the first 4:45 against Monroe City on Saturday, Raiders coach Greg Altmix did not take drastic measures.

Instead, in the huddle during the timeout he called after Wyatt DeGrave hit a 3-pointer with 3:15 left in the first quarter to give Monroe City that 13-point lead, Altmix simply gave his troops some encouragement.

“It’s kind of crazy when you call a timeout down 13-0 and you’re saying don’t change anything, but we didn’t,” Altmix said. “We just said, ‘Stay composed, stay focused, keep playing hard, and we’ll get ourselves back in it. There’s a lot of game left. Just keep battling.’”

Raiders senior guard Alex Dance said the Raiders’ faith never wavered.

“We just kept believing,” Dance said. “We knew this game wasn’t over. We just all had belief. We knew that we just had to fight back, and it took one possession at a time to make that happen.”

QND cut that 13-point deficit to eight by the end of the first quarter and to two by the end of the third. The Raiders then held the Panthers scoreless for nearly a five-minute stretch in the fourth quarter. Beau Eftink gave QND a 50-49 lead on a 3-pointer with 5:40 left in the fourth quarter, and the Raiders never relinquished that lead in a 66-57 victory at the Monroe City High School gym.

“In basketball, yes, you have to do the fundamentals right, but sometimes you have to show character, you have to show composure, you have to show resilience,” Altmix said. “Those are the things we’ve talked about all season long. I tip my cap to my guys tonight. They never lost their composure. They just kept battling and battling. When you do that, good things happen.”

The Raiders have had their share of heartbreak this season. Three of their seven losses have come by three points or less, but Eftink, who scored 12 of his 19 points in the fourth quarter, was not going to let another one slip away.

“I wasn’t accepting a loss,” Eftink said. “I was tired of losing these close games, and I didn’t want to lose again.”

Eftink got the fourth quarter scoring started with a game-tying stepback midrange jumper that sent Monroe City’s Quincy Mayfield stumbling to the floor and caused a thunderous eruption from the QND bench.

“It added a little bit more fire in me, and I just built off of that,” Eftink said.

Mayfield made a contested layup with 6:05 left to give the Panthers a 49-47 lead, but Eftink answered with his go-ahead triple from just right of the top of the key 25 seconds later. Eftink followed that up with a putback off a Dance steal and missed layup just 16 seconds later. Cole Hays fouled Eftink in the process, and Eftink made the free throw to give the Raiders a four-point advantage with 5:24 left.

“I was going to do whatever it took,” Eftink said.

So did the Raiders, which included chewing up nearly 1:30 of clock before Conner Young drove the baseline and dished the ball to Gavin Doellman, who laid it up and in to extend the Raiders’ lead to 55-49 with 3:10 left.

Dance dubbed that possession the best one the Raiders have had all season.

“I would say so,” Dance said. “It was all five guys on the court. We were moving, sharing the ball, then we found the wide open guy.”

On an inbounds play in front of the Raiders bench a minute later, Dance hit Eftink with a lob pass as Eftink cut unmarked to the basket. Eftink made the layup, and after an Abram Smyser offensive foul on the other end, Jace Allensworth converted another sideline out-of-bounds play into a layup to extend the Raiders’ lead to 59-49 with two minutes left.

Wyatt DeGrave hit a 3-pointer to cut Monroe City’s deficit to 61-52 with 1:18 left, but that was as close as the Panthers got the rest of the way.

“I’d like to think Coach (Altmix) and I believe in a lot of the same things and how to play, so it was going to be pretty similar styles, but I got outcoached tonight,” said Monroe City coach Brock Edris, whose team entered the game ranked eighth in the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association Class 3 state poll. “The kids got outplayed.”

Twenty turnovers did not do the Panthers (14-3) any favors, either.

“We shot ourselves in the foot many times, but credit to QND,” Edris said. “They had their backs against the wall being down like they were early in the game, but they never let up and clawed back into it.”

Altmix said this win provided solid evidence the Raiders (13-7) have the goods — both tangible and intangible — to make a postseason run.

“We’re getting to a point where we’re starting to put the physical and mental together,” Altmix said. “(The postseason) is going to come. We just want to be the best we can when it does roll around, and games like this show that we can be pretty good.”