Boys basketball: Fourth-quarter rally lifts Manteno into virtual tie with Streator in ICE

STREATOR – The Manteno Panthers visited the Streator Bulldogs at Pops Dale Gymnasium on Friday with vengeance and a place atop the Illinois Central Eight Conference standings on their minds.

Fighting back from a seven-point, fourth-quarter deficit and closing the contest on a 21-10 run got them both.

Manteno took over first place in the ICE, tied in the loss column with its Friday night hosts, by besting the Bulldogs 59-55. The Panthers are now 22-4 overall, 10-1 in the ICE. Streator slips to 20-6, 9-1.

“It was a game of runs,” Streator coach Beau Doty said. “We make a run, they counter. We’d counter their run and come back. Unfortunately for us, their last last run happened to be as time expired. But with a seven-point lead with five and a half minutes to go, we’ve got to execute better.

“[Manteno] executed down the stretch, and they deserve the win.”

Streator used a Nolan Lukach putback at the third-quarter buzzer and three quick Christian Benning-Quinn Baker team-ups at the start of the fourth to lead 45-38 one minute, 10 seconds into the final quarter.

The Panthers responded with a pair of deep Ray Lee 3s and a game-changing, nine-point fourth quarter from senior guard Kyle McCullough – his three-point play with 1:19 left putting Manteno ahead 55-52, breaking the game’s final tie – to quiet the loud senior night crowd at the Pops.

“We knew we were going to be the two best teams [in the conference], and in the first matchup, they got us,” McCullough said. “The game was like this, they won by a few points, and the rest of the season we had this matchup circled on our calendar. We wanted to get one back.

“We were excited to come play here at Pops. We knew it was their senior night, a lot of people were going to be here, the energy was going to be here.”

Lee, whom Doty said “likes this building a little too much for my liking,” finished with 25 points, while McCullough added 18 with 11 rebounds to lead the Panthers. Manteno shot 41.5% (22 of 53) to Streator’s 41.1% (23 of 56) from the field and 78.6% (11 of 14) to the Bulldogs’ 50% (4 of 8) from the free-throw line and outrebounding its hosts 33-27.

“It was a good one getting this,” Panthers coach Zack Myers said. “You know, I wrote on the board before the game it was going to be a roller coaster of emotions. We were going to make runs and they were going to make runs, but the bottom line was we wanted to come out on top. ...

“Ray Lee hit a 3-pointer and had a big fourth quarter for us, and then Kyle just stepped up.”

Streator’s all-senior starting five included Benning with 16 points, seven rebounds and three assists; Baker with a 14-point, 12-rebound double-double from the center position; Logan Aukland with nine points; Landon Muntz with three points and a game-high three steals; and Zander McCloskey with one point and a steal.

Isaiah Weibel added eight points, and Lukach four off the bench, and it seemed early in the fourth to be enough for the Bulldogs – who pulled away to win 51-43 in Manteno on Dec. 15, the Panthers’ last loss before their current 15-game winning streak – to take complete control of the ICE race. Instead, Manteno transformed its seven-point disadvantage into a five-point advantage with 22.2 seconds to play.

Benning kept the Bulldogs’ slim hopes alive with a contested 3-pointer with 8.9 seconds remaining, but those hopes didn’t last long. McCullough sank two free throws with 6.6 seconds left that iced it for the now ICE-leading Panthers.

Streator is back in action Saturday evening with a visit to Route 23 rival Ottawa.

“This one hurts tonight, senior night on top of it,” Doty said. “It hurts, it stings. You’ve got to flush it and move on. It’s always good to have a game the next day when you have losses like this.”