THE ROAD TO REND LAKE
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ Du Quoin (Middle School) rallied to build a seven-point fourth quarter lead during Saturday afternoon's Southern Illinois Junior High School Athletic Association (SIJHSAA) Region III Class L Regional title game.
And then, the Warriors held on for dear life against host Herrin (Junior High School).
The Junior Tigers scored the last six points of the game-and missed three shots from point-blank range in the closing seconds-as DMS survived to win the championship, 44-43.
Reaching state for fourth time in five years, Du Quoin (18-3) advances to play the Region I winner (Murphysboro or Carbondale) at 1:15 p.m. this coming Saturday.
The state is again being held at Rend Lake College.
"Give our kids and Herrin's kids credit," DMS coach Ryan Heape. "They played their hearts out. I'm so proud of our kids. Their work and extra effort have helped them reach our goal of returning to the state tournament. They really do deserve this."
Ahead 42-37 with under two minutes left, DMS seemed to finally put the much-improved Herrin squad away when Austin Mansker turned a halfcourt steal into an easy lay-in.
The seven point lead whittled away quickly, following six consecutive points by the home team.
Included in a frenzied final minute was a technical foul against Mansker, along with a controversial illegal screen call that was also assessed to Du Quoin.
With 9.4 seconds left-and trailing just 44-43-Herrin had at least five shots at the basket. Three were within 10 feet, but all misfired.
Finally, Deeja Cole of DMS ran down one of the misses in the far right corner to end things.
Mansker finished with 12 points to pace the Warriors. He also had a team-best three assists.
Brenden Fred (10 points)), Cole (nine points) and Nate Boss (seven points, six rebounds, five steals) weren't far behind.
Daulton Beltz scored four points off the bench with Shayne Baxter adding a hoop.
"I thought our kids did a great job of fighting through all of the adversity and emotions during the fourth quarter," Heape said.
"We settled way too much for the three-pointer in the first half (3-of-16) but moved the ball better in the second half and got higher percentage shots."