I made the trip out to the Quincy Shootout. I wish I could say I did it simply because of my love of basketball but it worked out where I could drop off my wife at her parents and then I went on to Quincy. Everyone was happy.
My first visit to Quincy. Lots of basketball history. Fancy Hall of Fame room. They put on a nice event at Quincy Senior High School with first rate facilities, good food and very clean light in the gym!
I shot two games. Marian Catholic v. Rock Ridge from Columbia, Missouri. Marian slowly and methodically dismantled Rock Ridge. Every time I see Marian they impress me more and more. They are just calm and steady. No weaknesses. Ahron Uliss had 23 points. The Spartans have one of the toughest roads to Peoria as they could get. They will have to get past Brother Rice, Simeon, St. Rita and Bloom in the 4A Eisenhower Sectional and then either Curie or Whitney Young in the Northwestern Super-Sectional. Ouch!
The DePaul v. Quincy game was a whole other animal. Rams shot poorly in the first quarter. In the second quarter, they settled down, went on a run and took a 29-24 lead into the locker room.
I don’t want to say there was poor officiating. I am no judge of officials but they called 24 fouls on DePaul and 12 fouls on Quincy. I have seen a great many DePaul Prep/Gordon Tech games since Tom Klienschmidt took over. I don’t remember seeing any player foul out. Seriously. I mean like never.
Three starters fouled out tonight at Quincy.
Nevertheless, I have to hand it to Quincy. The Rams had chances and did not take advantage. The Blue Devils made all their free throws at the end of regulation, all except the one which opened the door for Perry Cowen to tie the game at the end sending the game to overtime. As I wrote above, I don’t like to blame a loss on bad officiating so I won’t. But this I learned: beware of the officials when visiting a downstate home team in a big game.
The game got a little chippy at the end. The teams exchanged some choice words as they walked out of the gym. I could not hear what was said so I hesitate to assign blame. I will see what I can find out and report.
As for the photos, there is very nice light in the Quincy gym. After a little testing before the first game, I decided to shoot both cameras at 3200 ISO and 1/800. My plan was to bring back the exposure in Lightroom.
You be the judge.
