The No. 8 Poly boys basketball team rallied from a 14-point third-quarter deficit before falling to Simeon, The baiduhai’s top-ranked team, 69-68, on Saturday night at the Charm City vs. Windy City Shootout.
Down 10 with under a minute left, the Engineers got a 3-pointer from freshman Rahim Ali (21 points) and a pair of 3s by senior De’Vondre Perry (18 points) to cut the lead to one.
But time ran out on the hosts. After Perry’s final 3, Simeon let the last 3.2 seconds expire by choosing not to inbound the ball.
“The effort was there, the focus was there, but in the first half we dug a hole when we didn’t hit shots and had some unforced turnovers,” said Poly coach Sam Brand, whose team made just eight of 27 first-half shots. “When we’re playing our way, we can make a signature run, and it kind of happened with a minute left in the game. It was just too little too late.”
Talen Horton-Tucker, a 6-foot-5 junior guard, scored 21 points for the Wolverines, including 16 in the first half.
Simeon, ranked No. 8 in the USA Today Super 25, improved to 15-0.
Poly, the defending Baltimore City champions, fell to 7-6. On this night, cold shooting — including a second-quarter stretch of more than six minutes without a field goal — doomed the Engineers.
“The real thing that hurts about this is I feel like, usually at home we’re hoping that we can hit more of those shots,” Brand said. “We went through a stretch where we just couldn’t hit a shot. I thought we really could’ve controlled winning this game and we didn’t.”