BELLEVILLE – One thing about Edwardsville’s girls basketball team: just when you think you’ve got them on the ropes, they find ways to get off said ropes and take command.
Makenzie Silvey helped the Tigers come off the ropes with a big three-point shot right before halftime to put EHS up 23-22 on Belleville West in their IHSA Class 4A Belleville West Regional final Thursday night. Edwardsville rode the momentum of that shot and a couple of subsequent threes in the third term to pull out to a 47-27 lead at three-quarter time on their way to a 57-36 win over the Maroons to put them into next week’s Alton Sectional.
“We knew it was going to be a tough game and its always hard to beat a good team three times,” Silvey, who wound up with a game-high 21 points, said, “so we had to be ready to come out and play hard.
“I think at halftime, we regrouped and were able to come out strong.”
“She kind of put us on her back there for a few minutes,” said Tiger coach Lori Blade of Silvey’s game-changing effort, “and that was good to see. We made some adjustments at halftime, and they executed and we knocked down a couple of shots and that changed everything.”
The Maroons came in with a game plan hoping to keep the Tigers from building some momentum, and it worked for the most part in the first half. The Tigers would have liked to play at a somewhat quicker tempo, but couldn’t rebound as much as Blade would have liked. “You have to rebound to do that (play at the pace Edwardsville would have liked),” Blade said, “and in the first half we couldn’t rebound, so then, we couldn’t run with it at all. But I thought the kids adjusted in the second half, and we got back to doing what we do well.”
“We had a game plan defensively where we hung back in the lane and try to take away a lot,” said Maroon coach Seth Garrett. “We got a little rattled in the third quarter, end of the second quarter, we gave up six points on some out-of-bounds play and we sent them to the line a lot in the first half; we maybe eliminate a few of those, it’s a totally different game at halftime.
“We go up six instead down one, so, we didn’t execute everything in the first half, but we did a pretty good job. We had a pretty good game plan defensively, we kept the pace in our favor.”
It was still pretty close in the opening stages of the third term, Silvey and Crist’eon Waters helping the Tigers open up a small lead at 27-23 before Silvey hit a pair of three-balls – one from NBA range – to open up a 33-23 lead with 4:11 left in the term, and the Tigers went from there, with Annie Ellis also connecting from behind the arc and Silvey hitting on a follow in the late stages as Edwardsville built a 45-27 lead at three-quarter time; they were never seriously challenged from that point.
Rachel Pranger added 18 points for the Tigers (28-1, having won 24 in a row), with Kate Martin getting six points. Chamya Darough led the Maroons (who were eliminated at 18-12) with 11 points, with Kayla Juenger scoring eight and Sydney Thurwalker adding seven.
The Tigers will meet the Belleville East-Quincy Notre Dame winner of the Granite City Regional (that final takes place at 7 p.m. Friday at Granite City’s Memorial Gym) at 7 p.m. Monday in the Alton Sectional semifinals, the winner advancing to the final at 7 p.m. Feb. 25 with a trip to the Bloomington Supersectinal at Illinois Wesleyan on the line, with that game set for 7 p.m. Feb. 29.
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