Boys basketball: McDonell stumbles in fourth quarter as Crickets rally for win

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By JON WEISBROD mailto:jon.weisbrod@lee.net
Saturday, January 19, 2008 12:53 AM CST

Ahead by four heading into the final stanza, the McDonell Macks boys basketball team was looking for the final blow.

Instead they got knocked out.

In an up-tempo, high-energy West Cloverbelt Conference bout Thursday night, it was Wesley Anderson who provided most of the jabs as Fall Creek took down McDonell, 76-63.

“It just felt like we were one punch away,” McDonell coach Archie Sherbinow said. “The way they came out and played in the fourth kind of a blind-sided us.”

The Crickets, who entered the game second in the WCC behind Eau Claire Regis, were led by Anderson’s career-high 32 points, many of which helped his team run away with the game in the fourth quarter.

“This one was much closer that the final 76-63 score,” Sherbinow said. “I felt like we had the tempo we wanted for the most part. We are a pretty young team though. We made some pretty bad decisions in the fourth.”

Fall Creek (10-3, 7-2 WCC) outscored McDonell 26-8 in the final eight minutes. Anderson, who came in averaging 7.4 points per game, jump-started the rally with eight consecutive points that started with a last second shot in the third and ended with an old-fashioned 3-point play with with 6 minutes, 4 seconds remaining in the game, giving Crickets a 56-54 lead.

“That’s just a senior wanting to win a the ball game,” Sherbinow said of Anderson.

Anderson, who tallied 13 points in the fourth quarter, helped ice the game late with a key basket at the 4:02-mark that came 90 seconds after McDonell pulled within two points. The next time the Crickets got the ball, the 6-foot swingman drove toward the baseline and drew a pair of defenders before dishing off a perfect pass to cutting a Zach Jacobson. He converted the easy lay-up, making it 62-56 with 3 minutes, 39 seconds remaining.

For the first three quarters, McDonell (7-6, 5-4) controlled the game, building a nine-point lead at 40-31 within the first 30 seconds of the third quarter.

Tony Bischel, who nailed four 3-pointers, led the Macks with 14 points. Nate Dahl added 12 and Jarrod Martell chipped in with 11.

Sherbinow, however, says there is plenty his team can take from how they played the Crickets in two games this season.

“We can play with them,” Sherbinow said. “I just told them (after the game) to keep their heads up and understand that we lost to a very good team tonight.”

Thursday’s defeat marked the second time the Crickets used a late run to defeat the Macks this season. On Nov. 30, Fall Creek trailed entering the fourth quarter before forcing overtime, where it eventually won 78-69.

“This team’s in our sectional, so there’s a chance we’ll see them again,” Sherbinow said. “I think we learned a lot from the two times we have played them already and we will only get better from how we performed.”

Notes

Fall Creek shot 21-for-31 from the free throw line, including a 13-for-16 effort in the fourth quarter...McDonell was 12-for-17 from the stripe but made only 2 of 4 shots from the line in the fourth...McDonell is now in a three-way tie with Augusta and Osseo-Fairchild for third in the conference...Fall Creek sits two games behind Regis...Four different players have now led the Macks in scoring in the last four games...Nate Dahl’s only two double-figure scoring performances have come in the last two games.