Wildcats rally falls short against Bushnell

Cole Bavery slips past a Bushnell defender for a basket Monday morning at the Macomb-WIU Holiday Basketball Tournament. Bavery and the Warsaw Wildcats lost games to Bushnell and Rock Falls.

A fourth quarter rally fell short for the Warsaw Wildcats.

The Wildcats (4-6) were eliminated from the Macomb-WIU Holiday Basketball Tournament with a 58-52 loss to the Bushnell-Prairie City Spartans Monday, Dec. 29.

Warsaw also lost their first round game against the number one seed, Rock Falls on Saturday.

Bushnell opened up an 18-point lead by halftime. The Wildcats stormed back, outscoring Bushnell 35-23 in the second half. A three-point basket by Seth Maag with 1 minute, 2 seconds remaining in the game cut the lead to five points, 52-47.

Warsaw began fouling to put Bushnell at the free throw line. The strategy worked as Bushnell's Clinton Abernathy missed two free throws, but Warsaw missed their shot on the other end. Another foul put Ryan Shaw at the line. He connected on both free throws to extend the lead to 54-47.

Maag scored two more of his 18 fourth quarter points to make it 54-49. The teams traded a free throw apiece before Shaw canned two more free throws to make it a six-point game with 19 seconds remaining.

Wade Heisler scored Warsaw's final point on a drive down the lane with nine seconds remaining.

Maag enjoyed his second high-scoring game of the tournament. He finished with 18 points against Rock Falls, and scored 22 points against Bushnell.

"We have to find somebody else to score," said Warsaw Head Coach Dave Hall. "We're not getting enough point production out of anyone else. We'd like to have three guys in double figures. We have one."

The Wildcats put themselves in an early hole. Trailing 15-11 after the first quarter, Warsaw committed four straight turnovers to start the second quarter. Ryan Thomas scored on an offensive rebound for their first points of the quarter with 5:06 remaining. Bushnell went on to outscore Warsaw 20-6 in the quarter.

"They had four turnovers and we had one steal at halftime," Hall said. "We had no defensive pressure. That was one of the things we had to do. We didn't play for 32 minutes. We played for 16.

"We outscored them by 12 in the second half. It might have been more if we would have done better at the free throw line ((12-of-24). If we would have played like that for 32 minutes, I think we would have won the game."

Heisler scored 10 points. Eric Van Ausdall had eight points. Cole Bavery and Ryan Thomas each had four points. Dylan Austin had three points. Lance LaBonte added one point.