PERRYVILLE LEAVES N. DAME DOG TIRED

With Perryville High edging ahead late in the game, Notre Dame mashed the pedal to the metal, but the tank was empty.

Notre Dame had two players out with injuries and two playing with the flu, and Perryville outlasted the Bulldog-tired hosts 66-55 Tuesday.

"I knew that (Notre Dame was) going to be pretty limited on how much they were going to be able to go," said Perryville coach Dean Lewis. "And we've got a pretty athletic team. I thought as the game kept going, we'd be able to wear them down."

Notre Dame trailed 47-46 with 5:33 remaining but Perryville scored the next seven points. The Bulldogs simply couldn't keep up.

"We were fatigued. No doubt," said Notre Dame coach Chris Janet. "(Jason) Rubel and (Anthony) Ressel just couldn't go anymore. Bless their hearts, they came out and were going to try to give us the effort. They've really been suffering through a very serious viral infection."

After Notre Dame (6-13) had trailed 38-25 with three minutes left in the third quarter, reserve Jason Garner hit consecutive 3-pointers to help pull the Bulldogs back into it as they trailed 43-38 entering the fourth quarter.

Then early in the fourth period, another backup, Michael Gosche, hit two 3s to keep Notre Dame chugging to within a point. But Perryville (14-10) switched into a high-gear transition mode and led 54-46 a minute later.

"We got some guys off the bench," Janet said, "and made that big push but after that we just broke down defensively too many times to maintain what we had done. (Perryville) got layup after layup at a crucial point in the game."

Perryville's Paul Weinkein, a 6-foot-6 senior, scored 14 of his game-high 23 points in the third quarter. Tyson Brown, a 6-1 senior, had 14 of his 20 in the fourth. Weinkein had six rebounds and six assists, and Brown had six rebounds, six assists and four steals.

"Those two work so well together," said Lewis. "And I don't claim any of that. Those two are really seeing the floor now and they know where they've got to be. With those two clicking like that, we're getting to be an awful good team."

Weinkein, who said he is getting over an illness and didn't practice on Monday, was quiet in the first half before becoming very conspicuous in the second.

"I just took it kind of slow in the first half; I didn't want to get into foul trouble," he said. "In the second I half I just came out a lot stronger and played a lot harder. This was a big game, so I felt we needed a boost in the third quarter.

"Me and Tyson Brown, he was doing a great job underneath, we just had a two-man offense going. They had me double-teamed a lot, so I just found him a lot."