Rock Falls 70 Providence Catholic 69

Dylan Austin came up big in the second half. He was near perfect from the field for the game, missing just one FG attempt, including the game winning three-pointer off an assist from Jake Junis with :07 remaining. Jake Junis led us with 26 points and 11 rebounds. It was great to see him bounce back after a rough stretch. Dylan Austin finished with 18 points on 7 for 8 shooting from the field. Matt Lauts had a nice game also kicking in 18 points. Matt finished the weekend 10 of 10 from the FT line.

There were a lot of good things that happened in this one. The one negative is that we shot 64% from the field (including 7-11 from 3 point range) and struggled to win. Providence shot well (51%), but we defended poorly and compunded that with a lot of bad fouls around the basket. Providence shot 27 FT's, most coming in the second half. I thought we did a nice job of speeding the game up to our liking in the second half. We got them to turn the ball over more and rush some shots. We jumped out early in the second half, but followed that up with huge mental breakdowns that led to a 15-1 run for Providence to close the third quarter. That absolutely cannot happen again! Poor defense, poor decision making, dumb fouls and bad turnovers all occurred during this 4 minute stretch. The worst part was we had no leadership on the court, no calming influence to help stop the bleeding.

However, that changed in the 4th quarter. After falling behind 10 with 6:00 to play, I thought we showed a lot of discipline and played smart basketball. We didn't rush offensively or force bad shots. We attacked the basket. We played more disciplined on defense and forced a couple turnovers and some misses. We capitalized on every opportunity in the fourth quarter and did not turn the ball over once. I was proud of the finish and the maturity we showed to bounce back from a horrendous stretch of basketball. We did talk a lot about the fact that we cannot let those mental breakdowns continue for that long. They do happen in a game, but good teams minimize that run and answer it immediately.

Jake Junis led us with a +34 performance rating. Matt Lauts was +18 and Dylan Austin +16. As a team we were +74 for the game. Tevin Rumley led us with 7 assists and Shay Brown had 3 steals. We did take two charges (McNinch and Junis) which is another thing we have talked at great lengths about doing.

We have won six out of seven with four home games in a row coming. None will be easy. Kewanee knocked off IVC last Friday night by a point. The following weekend we host Princeton and Rockford Lutheran. We then host IVC the weekend after that. All will be good tests for us!