Cold third-quarter shooting dooms depleted Railer boys basketball squad in 47-36 loss to Rochester

 

[December 23, 2024]  LINCOLN – Following an overtime win Friday at Mahomet-Seymour during which another Lincoln player suffered injury, it looked for a bit Saturday night like the Railers might overcome the adversity in their Central State 8 contest against Rochester.

While LCHS held a one-point lead at halftime, the Rockets outscored the short-handed Lincoln squad 18-4 in the third quarter to pull away en route to a 47-36 win.

With Frank Sanders and Karson Komnick already out with injuries, the Railers lost senior Drew Hayes for Saturday’s contest against Rochester when he suffered a lower leg injury on Friday against Mahomet-Seymour.

With three-fifths of his projected starting lineup for the season on the shelf, Railer head coach Neil Alexander has had to juggle his lineups and personnel, moving players around to different positions and roles. For the first half, it appeared his team was up to the challenge, leading 10-8 after one quarter and 21-20 at intermission.

But the Rockets blasted off in the third quarter, launching and connecting on a pair of three-pointers in their first two possessions of the second half to take a 26-21 lead. Rochester would go on to outscore Lincoln 18-4 in the period, unofficially hitting seven of nine shots in the quarter while Lincoln connected on two of nine from the field.

“The first couple possessions set the tone for them,” Alexander said of the third quarter. “I think they hit two threes…bang, bang. They got it [the lead] up to five and they just gradually worked it out. We struggled getting into an offense. We didn’t hit the shots that we had. We had a couple turnovers.”

Lincoln outscored the Rockets 11-9 in the final quarter but could get no closer than 10, and Rochester improved to 5-3 overall and 3-1 in the Central State 8 with a 47-36 win over the Railers.

“That’s a good basketball team,” Alexander said, “but I still feel that we could do a better job with it.”

Lincoln fell to 7-3 overall and 2-2 in league play with the loss. The Railers were led by Blake Horn with 13 points for the game. Sophomore Bryce Blahovich added 8 and Gabe Smith tallied 7.

Khordell Gregory led Rochester with 14 points while Eli Cox and Jack Melton each scored 11 points for the Rockets.

One area in which Alexander said his team could improve is in its approach to defending opponents’ drives to the basket.

“One of our goals on the board was stop dribble penetration and we didn’t do it,” he said. “We took some bad angles, but those are all correctable. Once they [the Railers] see film, they can really see. They don’t understand what we talk about with angles. You can be the slowest person in the world, but if you understand angles and things, you can get there. That’s one of the things we have to get better at.”

Even with the loss, perhaps the most important number to come out of the game for Lincoln is 0. Nil, none, nothing, nada, zero….as in, the Railers suffered zero injuries in the contest. Given his depleted roster, a game without a significant injury must feel like a relief if not some kind of moral victory for Alexander.

If he hasn’t finalized his list yet, perhaps Santa can bring Alexander a revised version of one of those “days without accidents in the workplace” signs for the locker room proclaiming: “This team has played X days with zero injuries.” No doubt Alexander’s Christmas wish would be to be able to fill In the blank on such a sign with a nice large number.

But with no games scheduled until the team’s December 27 opener at the Prairie Farms Holiday Classic in Collinsville, the Railers can focus on getting healthy. Lincoln’s first-game opponent in the tournament is Mundelein, a Class 4A school in the suburbs of Chicago with an enrollment of more than 2,000 students.

“They’re going to be bigger and stronger, but right now our ‘bigger and stronger’ is sitting next to me,” Alexander said of his walking wounded Railers, which include injured 6-foot-5 twin towers Sanders and Hayes. “That’s why we like to play them [larger schools]; they make us better. We want to try to do the best that we can and become a better basketball team by playing those good teams.”

Lincoln’s first contest in the tournament at Collinsville is scheduled for December 27 at 7:30 PM. The next Railer game will take place December 28 at 2:30 PM against a yet-to-be-determined opponent.

For those unable to travel to the tournament, WLCN 96.3 FM and all media outlets which provided live videostream coverage of the contests are being forced to alter their coverage. Tournament organizers are not allowing media outlets to provide live videostream coverage of games. Individuals who wish to watch the tournament action live online must pay to do so through the exclusive live videostream provided by the tournament.

WLCN will have a feed available via its YouTube channel, but as the station did with its coverage of the 2024 LCHS Lady Railer basketball team’s postseason run, the YouTube feed will only include the audio of WLCN’s play-by-play radio coverage, a scoreboard on the screen and sponsor information and no live visual images in real time of game action. The only live video that will be shown on WLCN’s YouTube feed will be of non-game elements such as WLCN’s pregame/halftime/postgame shows, other breaks and other non-game live imagery included.

This change does not impact radio coverage of the tournament; the only impact is that media outlets are not being allowed to show video of live game action in real time as it is taking place. WLCN’s audio coverage of the games will be available as usual on the radio at 96.3 FM and via the Mixlr app for smart devices.

[Loyd Kirby]