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Larkin falls short against Indianapolis Pike

Winning will matter to Larkin boys basketball coach Deryn Carter next Friday night when his team travels across town to face rival Elgin in the Upstate Eight River opener.

After the Royals lost 64-61 to talented Indianapolis Pike at the Rockford Tipoff Classic at Rockford East on the day after Thanksgiving to slip to 1-2, he said the process, for now, is more important than the end result.

"This is about getting better and there's no doubt we're leaving this gym a better basketball team," Carter said after facing the No. 10 team in a preseason poll of Indiana Class 4A schools. "I'm as competitive as anybody, but I'm also mature enough to know it's not about winning right now."

Still, Larkin had a chance to tie the game in the waning seconds.

Rather than hold the ball with a 3-point lead and wait to be fouled in the double bonus, Pike guard Derek Hawthorne saw an open lane and drove for a layup with 16 seconds left. The ball rolled off the rim.

Larkin's Tariq Burns rebounded the miss for the Royals and moved the ball up court to guard Keion Adams, who passed to Keyvon Kyles in the left corner.

Kyles, a junior guard who already had canned four 3-pointers, pump faked to get Pike junior point guard Elijah Pennington to fly by him. However, Pennington recovered and blocked Kyles' shot with 7 seconds to play and the Red Devils controlled the loose ball to preserve the 3-point victory.

"I honestly thought I had too much space and I obviously didn't," said Kyles, who led the Royals with 16 points. "I pump faked and I saw him fly so I was like, 'I got a chance to put it up,' but it got blocked. That was good defense on his part."

Larkin jumped to an 11-4 lead behind three Kyles 3-pointers and took its largest lead at 23-11 on AJ Hunter's free throws early in the second quarter.

However, 6-foot-6 Larkin star Christian Negron picked up his second foul two minutes into the second period and stayed on the bench until halftime. Pike took advantage of Negron's absence with a 17-5 run to tie the game at 28. Larkin led 32-30 at the half.

The evenly matched teams traded leads seven times early in the third quarter, but Negron picked up 2 more fouls in the first 2:01 and was relegated to the bench for the next few minutes.

Again, Pike surged with Negron on the bench. Junior point guard Justin Thomas, who has Division-I interest, according to Red Devils coach Bill Zych, keyed a 10-0 run with a pair of buckets to stake his team to a 51-42 cushion with 2:41 left in the third.

Negron re-entered the game with two minutes left in the third quarter and shuttled in and out of the lineup several times in the fourth quarter. Larkin was further handcuffed when Hunter fouled out with 5:28 left in the game.

"As a staff we were battling back and forth whether to put Christian back in," Carter said, "but this early it was interesting to see what we did to respond."

Trailing by 5 points with 3:12 left, Adams finished a driving layup and Negron, who did not foul out, sank 2 free throws with 2:48 left to trim the deficit to 61-60 with 2:48 to play.

A pair of Isiah James free throws and another by Thomas offset a free throw by Adams and made it a 3-point game with 45 seconds left.

Like his coach, Negron kept the loss to one of Indiana's better teams in perspective.

"I know where our team is, so does coach, so does everybody else," said the junior, who finished with 11 points. "We're competitors and we like to win. They're keeping score so it would be nice to win, but we left the gym a better team."

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