BASKETBALL: Senior Night stunner - Indians beat Nashville 46-35
DU QUOIN, IL - In a potential preview of this week's Sparta Regional, Du Quoin stunned SIRR Mississippi Division champion Nashville 46-35 on Senior Night at DHS this past Friday in Anders Gymnasium behind strong performances from two of their upperclassmen who were honored prior to tipoff.
Austin Mapps fired in four three-pointers on his way to a game-high 16 points and fellow senior Deeja Cole went off in the second half for all of his 15 points, leading the Indians to their 12th win of the 2012-13 campaign. Nashville had previously beaten Du Quoin by 17 points back in January.
"Austin Mapps, you can't say enough about him," said Indians' head coach Gabe Sveda. "There's not many people out there that want to win as badly as I do, and he might be one of them. He has a heart of a lion, he fights every day in practice, he never gets his dauber down enough to where it effects how hard he works, and that's really a credit to that kid."
"Deeja Cole, a lot of things opened up for him in the lane. We wanted to do that, get their bigs out and spread the court a little bit. He found the openings and did an outstanding job in the second half of finishing inside."
The Hornets appeared to be taking control in the first quarter after a three-pointer from Scott Brown, a short-range deuce in the paint from Royce Newman, and a transition bucket by Keegan Anderson put Nashville up 7-2 early on.
Mapps got open in the corner for his first triple of the night moments later, though, and Du Quoin slowly started to build momentum. Mapps, Brenden Fred and Spencer Cook all scored during a 6-0 spurt for the Indians in the second quarter and DHS took an 18-17 lead into the half.
The third period went back and forth until Mapps connected from downtown again, this time beating the buzzer to give Du Quoin a 29-24 lead with eight minutes to play. Mapps wasn't finished, hitting another three-pointer to open the fourth quarter and give the Indians what was their biggest lead of the night at the time.
The Hornets cut the lead down to five on a couple occasions, but tenacious defense by Du Quoin kept them out in front. The Indians weren't completely lights-out at the free throw line down the stretch, but hit plenty of charity tosses in the final two minutes to prevent any sort of meltdown.
"We really bought into the game plan this week in practice," Sveda said. "We knew we really had to help inside and the key was, they can hurt you from the outside as well, and our guards really did a good job helping and sprinting back out there on our closeouts. Throughout the season we've not been as disciplined as I would have liked as far as leaving our feet on defense, (but tonight) we did a really good job of staying down, throwing our hands up and contesting shots. I'm really proud of our team effort on defense tonight."
The Indian defense held Nashville's Chance Reuter scoreless and allowed the Hornets' big men (Newman and Devin Holle) to combine for just 12 points.
"They got (Newman) shoved out off the block, had him up higher than normally," said NHS head coach Brad Weathers. "We couldn't knock down enough shots outside to open it up. You've got to credit their defense, they really got after us and we had a difficult time. They really swarmed and collapsed, you tip your hat to them for as hard as they played. Hopefully that's a wake-up call for us."
Perhaps the most encouraging part of the win for the Indians was the way they closed out the game. Du Quoin may have given away a handful of games they seemingly had control of this year, but not on Friday night.
"We've worked so hard on that," said Sveda. "It's really tough not having a true point guard and that's not the kids' fault, but we have kids like Deeja Cole, A.J. Smith, Brenden Fred, John Erwin handling the ball for us, they did an outstanding job taking that over for the first time this year. We've worked so hard in practice on moving the ball, moving without the ball and cutting and finding the openings. That's just due to hard work. These kids have really bought in and it showed tonight."
Fred had, for him, a quiet night with 7 points. Daulton Beltz finished with 4 points, Cook and Erwin 2. Nashville was led by Anderson's 13 points.
The Indians (12-15, 4-6) had Saturday and Sunday to prepare for Monday night's postseason opener in Sparta. Fourth-seeded Du Quoin takes on fifth-seeded Red Bud at 7:30 on Monday in the 2A Regional at Sparta High School with the winner getting No. 1 seed Nashville (21-7, 8-2) on Wednesday at 6:00.