Neuqua Valley falters in final minutes
DeKALB - Three-pointers by Trenton Kyler, Jamarcus Winters and Avery Medina erased a 7-point Neuqua Valley lead in the final 1:33 as DeKalb remained perfect in DuPage Valley Conference boys basketball play with a 45-44 win Wednesday.
"We definitely blew that game," Neuqua Valley coach Todd Sutton said. "We certainly blew it. Up 7 with a minute and a half to go, yeah, you can't blow them."
The Wildcats (17-6, 2-4) led 16-4 early, then after a free throw by Connor Davis - who finished with a team-high 15 - led 41-34 with 1:33 left.
But the Barbs (19-5, 6-0) began their frantic comeback when Kyler hit a 3-pointer to bring the lead to 4. Patrick Hoffman connected on 1 of 2 free throws to push the lead to 42-37 with 1:17 left. Kyler capped his 25-point night with a pair of free throws with 1:05 left, bringing the Neuqua lead down to 3.
That's when Winters - just inserted into the game for the first time after Daniel Brown fouled out - came up with a steal, then drained a 3 down the other end to tie the game with 40.1 seconds left.
"Coach subbed me in and I knew as a possible shooter I had to knock it down," Winters said. "I knew I had to do it for my team."
John Poulakidas made a pair of free throws to put the Wildcats back on top with 17 seconds left. Without any timeouts left the Barbs took the ball downcourt. Kyler found Medina, and he drained the 3-pointer with 4.5 seconds left.
"TK was doing a really good job the whole game and he recognized that they double-teamed him," Medina said. "He found me open and got me an open shot on the fake. He got me a wide-open shot and I had the confidence to knock it down."
The Wildcats heaved a baseball pass down the court on the inbounds, and it found its way to Davis, who missed the 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Sutton said a combination of missed free throws, the turnover and a lack of boxing out on the missed free throws were costly.
"That will get you beat every time," Sutton said.
As for how he expects his team to bounce back?
"Don't know about that one," Sutton said. "Wait to be seen."
The Wildcats double-teamed DeKalb leading scorer Joe Owens most of the night, holding him to 1 point and a team-best 6 rebounds. Medina had 7 points, and the next highest scorer for DeKalb was Zach Russell with 5 - and Russell didn't play most of the second half after a hard collision on the first play of the third quarter.
Poulakidas had 11 for the Wildcats and Mark Gronowski had 8 points and a game-high 8 rebounds.
DeKalb opened the second quarter on a 12-0 run after Neuqua closed the first on a 16-0 run.
"We preach to our guys nothing is going to go perfect, keep fighting, keep fighting," DeKalb coach Mike Reynolds said. "We've done that the last two conference games. We were down 16-4, and we went on a 12-0 run and got back into the game. We had some foul trouble with Dan, who didn't play his best game. Grays and Joe were able to claw up the middle. They did a concerted effort to take Joe out and TK was really good. Avery was really good down the stretch. Jadyn (Thompson) played almost the entire second half after Zach got hurt."