By MATT SCHUCKMAN
Herald-Whig Sports Writer
EAST MOLINE -- Sean Taylor tried to make it sound like it hasn't been too long since the Quincy High School boys basketball team last won at East Moline's Panther Den.
"I told (WGEM Radio's Chuck Mahon) we won just five short years ago," the chuckling Blue Devils coach said tongue-in-cheek. "So people are forgetting that one."
They'll forget the four losses since that nine-point victory in 2004 if the Blue Devils can win Friday night.
Second-seeded Quincy set up a Class 4A regional championship rubber match with East Moline when Mitchel Rein made two free throws with 8.5 seconds to hold off third-seeded Pekin 36-32 in Wednesday night's semifinal.
The Blue Devils (15-11) and Panthers (17-10) split the regular-season series and shared the Western Big Six Conference championship with 8-2 records.
"We have to play even better," Quincy forward Shawn Blakeman said. "They are a great team. They have a lot of weapons. We have to play defense again as well as we did tonight."
That will be tough to do.
The Dragons' Jamie King and Zach Curless combined for just nine points as the Blue Devils rotated three defenders -- Zach Forbes, Isaiah Johnson and Demeique Humphrey -- on King and kept Curless from attacking the basket.
The two had combined for 29 points when Pekin beat Quincy 54-45 in December at the Pekin Insurance Holiday Tournament.
"Defensively, the guys executed well and played so hard," Taylor said. "It was team defense. ... We wanted to keep someone fresh on King as much as possible. Those kids did a wonderful job guarding every possession."
They did a solid job of recognizing who had the hot hand, too.
Rein outscored Pekin alone in the first half 13-12, hitting 6 of 8 from the field. His putback of a Jordan Witte missed 3-pointer gave Quincy the lead for good at 14-12, and his old-fashioned three-point play was instrumental in Quincy's 11-0 run to close the first half.
He finished with game highs of 15 points and seven rebounds.
"Once I made the first one, I was like, 'Keep giving it to me. I'll do this all day,'" Rein said.
It helped Pekin hadn't seen Rein up close -- he missed the December meeting with a knee injury -- and defensively, the Dragons' switching on screens created mismatches on the block.
"We told Mitch in practice, when you get it, don't ball fake," Taylor said. "We wanted him to shoot over the top because if he caught it that probably meant he had a mismatch.
"The passers did a great job of recognizing that. Mitch did a great job of putting the ball in the basket."
Quincy did a better job as a team of scoring through three quarters. The Blue Devils knocked down 11 of 25 shots (44 percent) and converted eight offensive rebounds into 12 points while building a 31-20 lead.
However, an offensive lull eerily similar to the one it experienced in the December loss to Pekin nearly cost Quincy.
The Blue Devils went the first 6 minutes, 24 seconds of the fourth quarter without scoring, allowing the Dragons to whittle the deficit to 31-28. Quincy's lead dwindled to 33-32 when Pekin's Tyler Ruschmeyer hit a 3-pointer with 52 seconds left in regulation.
Humphrey split a pair of free throws with 45.1 seconds left before the Dragons' milked the clock to 10 seconds before Ruschmeyer launched a 3-pointer from the right wing.
The long rebound caromed into Rein's hands, and he calmly hit the two free throws for the winning margin.
"My mindset was take it back to practice," Rein said. "You're in old Blue Devil Gym just shooting free throws. There's nothing to it."
Nor is there any secret to why Quincy advanced.
"We can play defense," Rein said. "If we can go six whole minutes without scoring and still have the lead after that, that has to be good defense."
-- mschuckman@whig.com/221-3366
