Boys basketball: Sterling starts and finishes strong, but struggles in middle quarters in loss to first-place Moline

STERLING – The Sterling Golden Warriors got the exact start they needed Friday night in their Western Big 6 home game against the first-place Moline Maroons at Musgrove Fieldhouse.

With eight points each from JP Schilling and Kael Ryan, they grabbed a three-point lead after the opening quarter. But after long cold stretches in the second and third quarters, they fell behind by 20 points, then lost 73-64 after a big fourth-quarter rally fell short.

[ Photos from Sterling vs. Moline boys basketball ]

Even when their deficit looked insurmountable late in the third quarter, the Warriors continued to play hard. That resilience is what’s kept them in games all season long, and it was on display again Friday.

“It shows that as a team, we never give up,” Sterling forward Lucas Austin said. “We play 1-15 as a whole team, and encourage each other. We just never give up.”

“We’ve got great heart. We all stick together and play great team basketball,” Schilling said.

Moline, ranked No. 2 in Class 4A in this week’s Associated Press poll, took a 9-5 lead two minutes into the first quarter after Brock Harding grabbed a defensive rebound, ran down the court and hit a top-of-the-key 3. But Sterling surged shortly after, ending the opening quarter on a 15-8 run.

Schilling tied the game at 17-17 with a left-wing 3 with just over two minutes left, then hit another 3 from a similar spot to make it 20-17 Warriors less than a minute later.

In the second quarter, Sterling was outscored 21-8.

Jasper Ogburn got a layup off a post feed from Grant Welch to ignite the run, then Harding drained a right-wing 3 to go up 22-20 with 5:39 left before halftime. The Maroons stayed in front the rest of the game.

With 4.8 seconds left, Ogburn hit two free throws, pushing the Moline lead to 38-28 at the break.

“We got stops on defense,” Moline’s Owen Freeman said about the momentum-shifting second quarter. “They came out hot. Obviously, this is a big game, a lot of hype, all the fans here. So they started off hot, but we got some stops and that kind of gave us momentum.”

In the first six minutes of the second quarter, the Warriors scored just three points. In the first half, they also conceded eight offensive rebounds, and the Maroons consistently capitalized on second-shot opportunities.

“We knew coming in that they had great size. Against good teams and big teams like that, there’s no excuses,” Schilling said. “We gotta get those rebounds, and we can’t let those second-chance points happen.”

“When they get offensive rebounds, they get more chances to score. So that was difficult for us,” Austin added. “We were trying to limit them – that was a big focus at halftime – trying to limit them as best we can. And we’ve just gotta box out and be stronger.”

Through the first 6:46 of the third quarter, Sterling was held to seven points. After an Austin mid-range fadeaway made it a 42-33 game, Moline scored 13 of the next 15 points. Freeman finished an alley-oop layup off a backboard bounce from Harding for a 50-35 lead, then Harding buried a left-wing 3 and Maddux Dieckman put back a teammates’ miss to stretch it to 55-35.

Austin hit back-to-back 3s in the final minute – first from the right wing with 50 seconds left, then deep from the left wing at the buzzer – to draw the Warriors within 55-41.

Schilling scored 19 points in the fourth quarter to lead a 23-18 Sterling run, and the Warriors pulled within 71-64 on a Schilling right-wing 3 with 29 seconds left, but ran out of time to complete the comeback.

Schilling scored 32 points, made six 3-pointers and grabbed two rebounds to lead Sterling, while Austin totaled 21 points, 11 rebounds, two assists and one block, and Kael Ryan added 10 points and four rebounds.

Freeman led the Maroons with 21 points, nine rebounds, two assists, four blocks and one steal. Fellow Iowa recruit Harding tallied 16 points, three rebounds and five assists, while Trey Taylor chipped in 14 points and five rebounds, and Welch added 12 points, five rebounds and five steals.