Warriors fall short on the road at Rend Lake

Raekwon Drake looks to shoot against Rend Lake's Joshua Rivers on Monday night.
Raekwon Drake looks to shoot against Rend Lake's Joshua Rivers on Monday night.

INA, ILL. – Rend Lake hit the bigger shots down the stretch to knock off the Warriors, 90-85, in Great Rivers Athletic Conference basketball on Monday night.

The loss did not affect the Warriors' post-season seeding at all, because Rend Lake is a Division II team. But it irked WVC coach Mike Carpenter nonetheless.

"It's a tricky game, because it doesn't really matter in the (post-season district) standings," Carpenter said. "But the fact is you're in college and you're playing a college basketball game. We had some guys just mentally out of it tonight."

Rend Lake (13-16 and 6-11 in GRAC play) came up big in the final minutes, particularly Nasan Ayala. He hit a 3-point field goal to beat the shot clock with 47 seconds left, followed up by another bucket to cement the upset win.

Wabash Valley fell short in its bid for win No. 20, and will instead carry a 19-10 (12-5 GRAC) record into the regular-season finale on Wednesday at Southeastern.

 "We went back to our selfish stuff from November in the first half," Carpenter said. "We're not going to beat anybody when we're selfish."

Marcus Garrett scored 22 points to lead the Warriors. Raekwon Drake scored 16 points, while Tony Burks added 12. Both Amir Yusuf and Isaac Stanback hit for double figures, with 10 points apiece.

Rend Lake was led by Cortland Soll with 22 points. Hot-shooting Hayden Thomas, who hit four from beyond the arc, totaled 18, while Keith Kiner added 17. Omar Parchman finished with 14 points for the winners.

WVC had its' biggest lead of eight points, 46-38, late in the first half, before Rend Lake scored the final six points to narrow the margin to two points at intermission. The second half was played close to the cuff until Ayala's shots provided some separation for Rend Lake at the close.