The Blake Renfro who started for McHenry against visiting Dundee-Crown wasn’t the same one who finished the basketball game.

“He struggled throughout the game,” McHenry coach Corky Card said of his 6-foot-7 senior forward. “But he hit a big shot when we needed it.”

Renfro made amends for his slow start by sinking a clutch 3-pointer to force overtime, and his confidence continued to soar. His lob pass off the backboard to a trailing Adam Anwar, who dropped the ball into the basket, capped a 7-0 run in OT and punctuated the Warriors’ 50-44 win Tuesday night.

“I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Renfro, a University of Wisconsin-Platteville commit, said of his flashy assist to Anwar on a 2-on-0 with 1:30 left. “We’ve done that before. Adam and I always play with each other. We’re best friends.

“I had a wide-open layup,” Renfro added with a smile. “I should have taken that.”

Anwar led all scorers with 25 points, including 19 in the second half, as McHenry rallied for its second straight win, after two losses in a row, to improve to 15-6 and 6-3 in the Fox Valley Conference.

Renfro and all of his teammates had difficulty early against upset-minded D-C (3-14, 0-9 FVC), which led 17-9 late in the first half, before Anwar hit two free throws with less than a second on the clock. Renfro’s only shot in the first half was a missed 3-pointer.

“I wasn’t attacking the rim,” said Renfro, whose fourth-quarter 3 was his only basket of the night. “I just wasn’t playing like myself today. It was really all Dundee. They came at us right away. We weren’t ready for it, but you just got to keep on playing and hope for the best.”

Forward Rasheed Trice scored 18 points to lead D-C, which stunned McHenry on its home court last season. The Chargers won 48-45 on Feb. 11, giving McHenry, which tied for first place with Crystal Lake South, one of its only two FVC losses.

“We were a really aggressive team last year, making teams put the ball on the ground and making them drive toward us on defense,” Trice said. “This year we’re small compared to every other team, but we play with patience and control, and that’s why the ball was going in and why we were getting what we wanted. It’s just sometimes the ball doesn’t go in.”

Trice scored nine points in the fourth quarter, and his two free throws with 52.5 seconds left had D-C up 40-37. But a confident Renfro drained a right-wing 3 off a pass from Dane Currie to tie the score with 27 seconds left.

“Just my normal shot – one, two, step in,” Renfro said. “I knew we were down, but I didn’t know the time or anything. When I hit it, the crowd went crazy, and I was just hyped.”

Sophomore Nathan Pederson came off the D-C bench to score 15 points on 5-of-12 shooting from three-point range. When he banked in a left-wing 3 with 1:15 left in the third, the Chargers had the lead at 26-24.

“He can make them,” D-C coach Lance Huber said. “But we’re consistently trying to help him develop his all-around game. ... He doesn’t lack for confidence [shooting the ball].”

In OT, the 6-6 Ottaway opened the scoring with a three-point play, converting a layup off a pass from Josiah Kordik, before the 6-7 Anwar muscled inside and put back his own miss.

“We just didn’t have an answer for their size and strength,” Huber said.

Anwar and Renfro scored all 10 of McHenry’s points in OT.

“[D-C’s] kids have a good plan with what they’re doing against us,” Card said. “We had trouble speeding them up, and a kid [Pederson] hits five 3s. They played loose. You just hand it to them. They made plays all game, we got lucky to get back into it and then played well in overtime.”