Streator overcomes Peotone’s hot start in 55-44 win

STREATOR — It was one of those nights where Streator senior guard Matt Williamson just seemed to be in the wrong spot when a foul was called.

However, in the final three minutes of Tuesday’s Illinois Central Eight Conference game against Peotone, Williamson was right where he needed to be for the Bulldogs.

After spending a good portion of the contest in foul trouble, Williamson scored off an offensive rebound before knocking five of six free throws in the last 67 seconds to help Streator keep the Blue Devils at arm’s length in a 55-44 triumph at Pops Dale Gymnasium.

“Yeah, it was just one of those games,” said Williamson, who still finished with 14 points and five rebounds. “It was a little tough, I just seemed to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time tonight. It was nice to be able to help kind of close things out for us.”

The Blue Devils used six points from Nick Cronin, five from Brandon Weiss and an 8-2 run to hold an 18-10 lead after the opening period.

“We stayed composed and we just kept playing hard,” Williamson said. “We’ve been in that situation before a few times already this year, but we know if we just stick with it we’ll be OK.”

Williamson netted five points before picking up his third foul early in the second, Noah Lukach scored six and Blaize Bressner’s triple at the horn tied the game at 26.

“Peotone is a team that has two all-conference guys in Weiss and (Ruben) Velasco that can put up 25 points on any given night and a coach in (Ron) Oloffson that has won hundreds of hundreds of games in his career,” Streator coach Beau Doty said, his squad now 7-1 overall and 4-0 in league play. “They can be a dangerous team with those two players and a veteran coach.

“I didn’t think we came out as sharp as we should have to start, they also knocked down a few shots and we were back on our heels a little bit. We’ve been down double digits in the first half in four our seven wins, so this group doesn’t panic. Down 10 late in the first quarter isn’t the situation you want to be in, but we had Nolan Ketcham come off the bench in the second quarter and make a couple plays defensively to get us energized and Joe Hoekstra went in when Matt had to sit and did a great job rebounding and guarding Velasco.”

An acrobatic scoop layup by Isaiah Weibel and a layup by Williamson opened the second half, while a Weibel free throw and Lukach layup ended the quarter with the Bulldogs up 39-36.

Peotone (2-7, 0-4) closed to within four points three times — on a jumper by Cronin, a layup by Logan Mather and a 3-pointer by Velasco — but Williamson’s putback and free throws helped close out the win.

Lukach led Streator with an 18-point, 10-rebound double-double, with Tristan Finley adding 10 points, three rebounds and a pair of assists.

“We didn’t shoot the ball very well all night (20 of 48, 42%), but the one thing we have to hang our hat on every night is our defense and intangibles. We were able to hold them to 35% shooting in the final three quarters and found just enough offense to help us grab and hold on to the lead in the second half.”

Velasco had 14 points and seven rebounds to lead Peotone, with Cronin finishing with 10 points, and Weiss and Mather with eight points each.

“We kind of ran out of gas and we are a little banged up,” Oloffson said. “After the first quarter we stopped executing, stopped moving and stood around way too much on the offensive end. We also missed some really good looks at the basket at some key times, ones that we normally don’t, which if we could have knocked those down it would have made things interesting.

“We just couldn’t keep a hold of the momentum after the first quarter and Streator was able to just keep chipping away.”

Streator is back at home on Friday when it hosts Manteno, while on the same night Peotone will entertain Reed-Custer.