BASKETBALL: Du Quoin regroups in second half to beat Waterloo
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Du Quoin trailed by two at halftime, but pulled it together in the second half to get past Waterloo 60-47 on Thursday night at the 47th annual Sparta Mid-Winter Classic boys basketball tournament.
"We came out a little slow, we'd been hitting the last couple games, and we didn't tonight, but when you're not hitting and you come away and get a win like that, you've got to give a lot of credit to your team pulling together," said Indians' head coach Gabe Sveda.
"We had a big spark from our bench, again. Aaron Smith, Jesse McDicken, John Voss and a few others came in and gave us a spark and they pulled together."
The Indians jumped out in front 8-2 after back-to-back steals and buckets by Connor Wheeler. Brad Dillenberger brought the Bulldogs back with a three-pointer with 1:40 to go in the period and Du Quoin held a 14-11 advantage after one.
"After the first quarter we settled down a little bit and started playing a little bit better defense," said Sveda. "It still wasn't perfect by any means, at any point in the game, but we've got to do a better job helping on the dribble drives. Teams are going to start going after us a little bit on that, we've got to find a way to help each other out a little bit better and take a charge. We've got to look to take a lot more of those if teams are going to dribble into the lane on us."
James Williams stole it away from Waterloo on consecutive possessions to start the second, registering a layup on the first fast break then feeding Wheeler for two on the next as the Indians went ahead 18-11 and Bulldogs' coach Matt Mason called for timeout.
Much like Steeleville had two nights earlier, Waterloo utilized a zone defense against Du Quoin to slow down the Indians on offense and get back into the game.
"Teams are seeing that now, and we can probably expect a little bit more of that," Sveda said. "We haven't had a chance to work on it as much, we work on it all the time, but when you don't see it in a game it's a little bit different. Now we've seen it a couple of nights in a row, and we're starting to see what we need to work on and the kids are adjusting well to it, but we've got to do a better job getting ready for the zone."
Dalton Kaufmann had a stick-back for two plus a foul with 6:32 left in the half, then nabbed a steal for a breakaway layup to cut the lead to just two.
With 1:26 left in the half, Dillenberger gave the Bulldogs their first lead with a three-pointer and Waterloo headed to the locker rooms up 27-25.
Dillenberger was good on another three early in the third quarter, but then Du Quoin began to find the bucket after a cold-shooting first half.
Wheeler hit the Indians first - and only - three-pointer of the game with 5:30 left in the third to put DHS back on top 31-30, and his layup with just over a minute left made it 39-35 Du Quoin headed to the fourth quarter.
"We got the lead back there in the third quarter and we wanted to settle down a little bit," said Sveda. "We were getting a little bit jumpy and antsy on defense then in the full court, we wanted to get back on defense a little bit better and still be patient on offense and take what the defense would give us at times, and we did a pretty good job of that in the fourth quarter."
Jacob Frank cut the lead to two with a turnaround jumper to start the period, but the Indians responded with a 7-0 run to get the seperation they had been looking for all night.
With time ticking away, Waterloo was forced away from their zone defense and into fouling Du Quoin, and the Indians came through with 8-of-10 at the charity stripe in the final three minutes to keep the Bulldogs at a distance.
Wheeler followed up his career-high 43-point effort on Tuesday with a 29-point encore against Waterloo. Sam Gossett added 16 points, J. Williams 7, Aaron Smith 4, Brandon Williams and J.C. Davis 2. Dillenberger was high-point man for the Bulldogs with a dozen.
The Indians made only 1-of-13 attempts from behind the three-point arc but held Waterloo to just 10-of-44 (23%) from the field.
Du Quoin is now one victory away from advancing into Saturday's championship of the Sparta Mid-Winter Classic, but that one victory will have to come against the undefeated Murphysboro Red Devils on Friday at 8:30 p.m.
"I think the kids will be ready after tonight," Sveda said. "When you get a win like that on a tough shooting night, I think the kids will come back and respond."
"(Murphysboro is) awfully athletic, and then they've got some bigger kids that are experienced and well-schooled, and they can come out and hit perimeter shots, they can all shoot it. They love to run the floor, they're very active on defense, it'll be a really good matchup for us, a great test."
If the Indians are successful in beating a second undefeated team within a week, they will play Saturday at 8:30 p.m. against the winner of Pool A, likely to be the same undefeated team they knocked off last Saturday in double overtime: The Trico Pioneers.
Should the Indians lose to Murphysboro, they fall into the 7:00 p.m. third place game.
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