Titans unable to get to heart of the matter until it was too late in title game loss to Rockets

MACOMB, Ill. — The West Hancock boys basketball team took Rockridge’s punches.

The Titans’ counterpunches came too late.

The Titans could not crawl out of a 20-point deficit, and the Rockets won their second consecutive Macomb-Western Holiday Tournament title by defeating the Titans 66-59 on Saturday night at Western Hall.

“We woke up a little too late,” West Hancock junior forward Cooper Knowles said.

The Titans trailed 50-33 entering the fourth quarter before Hunter Froman caught fire. He had 15 points in the final period and scored all of the Titans’ points during a 13-4 run that trimmed the Rockets’ lead to 60-49 with 1:35 left.

“We started to play our game,” Knowles said. “He got shots that we should have gotten the whole game.”

The Titans got within 10 before a Jordan Crowley 3-pointer at the buzzer brought them as close as they had been since the second quarter.

“At the end of the fourth, we started taking advantage of what they were doing, and we got really easy shots,” Titans coach Jeff Dahl said. “It’s not rocket science.”

The Rockets shot 62.5 percent from the field and make six of their 11 3-point attempts in the first quarter en route to a 25-19 lead.

“What we were supposed to do was run them off the line,” Dahl said. “We thought if we could make them take twos, it would be a good game for us. We didn’t communicate. Once they made a couple, we stopped communicating and overrunning places instead of just getting it done. We just weren’t very good talking each other.”

As the lead grew to 39-24 at halftime and as large as 46-26 in the third quarter, Dahl noticed a change in his team’s demeanor.

“It was our heart when we got down,” Dahl said. “Our body language was awful. They were doing certain things to us that they shouldn’t have been able to do, but we just accepted it and lived with it, and we got taken advantage of.”

Dahl did not buy the notion that fatigue — this was the Titans’ and Rockets’ fourth game in three days — played a significant part in that dip in body language and play.

“That all comes down to right here,” Dahl said, pointing to his heart. “That’s the frustrating thing for me. We let our tiredness tell our mind what to do instead of our mind telling our body what to do. That’s just the bottom line.”

Froman could not conjure a reason for the Titans’ inability to punch back until it was too late.

“Our body language just got down for whatever reason,” Froman said. “Maybe we were tired, I don’t know, but it just killed us. That hadn’t been a problem yet this year. It kind of just tore us apart. We came out of the half feeling a little better, but it still wasn’t as good as it should have been. If it was as good as it should have been, it would have been a different game.”

Froman finished with a career-high 30 points on 12-for-18 shooting while the rest of the Titans combined for 29 points while making 31.4 percent of their shots.

“That’s not good,” Dahl said “I mean, it’s good that Hunter did that, but we just didn’t take advantage of stuff they were doing. We didn’t move the ball very well. We got in some spots where it stuck where we weren’t supposed to put it, and it got stuck there.”

Rockets senior forward Landon Bull put a cap on back-to-back tournament MVPs with a 13-point, eight-rebound, seven-assist performance.

“A little deja vu,” Rockets coach Jordan Harris said.

Froman earned a spot on the all-tournament team, but he said without a championship trophy, that honor does not mean much.

“I’d just like to come out and get the win, but we couldn’t do it tonight,” Froman said. “I’d trade that medal for a win every time.”

Knowles had a similar response in regards to what his all-tournament distinction means to him.

“Nothing if you don’t win,” Knowles said.