‘OUR GO-TO GUY’
Hines’ play sparks Dakota to regional victory over Roseville
A lot can be accomplished in four minutes.
A good track athlete can cover a mile in four minutes. A button can be sewed on. A grocery list can be written. Or a basketball game can be won or lost.
Dakota used the first four minutes of the fourth quarter Tuesday to go on a 17-2 run that carried the Cougars past Roseville 53-43 in a Division 1 boys basketball regional semifinal at Troy.
“We had some intestinal fortitude,” said coach Paul Tocco. “We decided we needed to play defense if we wanted to win a big game. We locked down defensively and we got stops. We knew that we could score, even though the lid was on the basket a little bit in the third quarter and we didn’t get too many opportunities.
“I’m very proud of our defensive effort in that fourth quarter. It was one of those moments in the season when your back is against the wall. The boys came out fighting in the fourth quarter.”
Roseville ended the third quarter with three straight baskets — two layups by Makell Johnson-Dobbs and a 3-pointer by Mark Alexander — to lead 37-32.
“We had a lot of momentum going into the fourth quarter,” said
Panthers coach Hassan Nizam. “Then we came out and missed an open shot to take an eight-point lead. They went on a 17-2 run. I don’t know how it happened. I’m still numb to it.”
Joshuah Hines sparked the Dakota rally with seven of his 15 points during the run. He triggered the spurt with two free throws, then was fouled on a 3-point attempt and converted those three. He scored on a layup after he grabbed a blocked shot by Tymias Williams. Hines then fed Williams for the last of his game-high 22 points.
“That’s my job,” Hines said. “These are my guys and I love them. As long as we are on the same page and we stick together, communicate and do all the little things, I can see us going a long way.
“We tried to slow them down with our pressure. They don’t really like pressure so we just tried to communicate and switch up our game plan. That got us the win. I just thank my team. I’m happy we pulled out the win and we can play another game.”
Tocco said that Hines has been sparking the team all season and is a reason the Cougars are 12-1 and have won their last nine games.
“He’s done that all year,” Tocco said. “He’s our goto guy. He played great defense. He shared the ball at the right moments and our guys came up with big shots.”
He also praised the play of the 6-foot-5 Williams.
“He had a fabulous game,” Tocco said. “Tymias finished good around the rim and he was a presence on defense. He was in a little foul trouble in the third quarter and that was part of our problem.”
Williams scored 14 points in the first half that ended with Dakota clinging to a 24-23 lead.
“I give him big props,” Hines said of Williams. “I’m in his head every day in practice. He really gave us a big jump tonight. He works his tail off in practice every day. When he went off with three fouls, I said, ‘we’ve got to get him back in because we can’t afford to have him on the bench.’ He came back and gave us big points and defense.”
Another factor in Dakota’s victory was going 14-14 from the free-throw line.
Nizam’s biggest disappointment was that the season was over for the Panthers.
“The worst part of it is that I can’t coach these guys tomorrow,” he said. “We weren’t playing to win a trophy, although it was nice to win the district. We talked about winning so we could spend more time with each other. By winning the district, we were able to have four or five more practices and film sessions.”
Nizam compared this year’s team to the Roseville team of four years ago. It was a young squad like this year’s and lost to Dakota in the regional. The next year, the Panthers climbed as high as second in some state rankings and lost to U-D Jesuit in a regional final.
“The experience and chemistry we built this year with our young guys is definitely going to help next year,” Nizam said. “We don’t want to be a team that just gets to the regional. We’ll take some time off next week to enjoy the spring break and then get back to the weight room. We just have to figure out how to get over that Dakota hump. Right now they seem to have our number.”
Derrek Bolton led Roseville with nine points and Makell Johnson-Dobbs had eight.