BELLEVILLE – The mission was simple but very difficult.
The Alton Redbirds trailed the undefeated Trinity Catholic Titans 39-24 at halftime. However, based on how Alton has played all season long, they weren’t going to lay down.
With less than 15 seconds remaining and the score tied at 62, 6-foot-5 forward Josh Rivers drove past 7-foot-0 center Ryan Kalkbrenner and laid the ball into the basket to give the Redbirds the lead. After two defensive stands, the Redbirds were able to hang on and pull off an incredible second-half comeback to beat the Titans 64-62 in the Chick-Fil-A Classic at Belleville East High School on Thursday night.
“We always got a chance. The frustrating part is we’ve played really good teams really well, but we hadn’t won any of those games,” Smith said. “A lot of what we’ve done up to this point doesn’t have to change a whole lot. If we’re unselfish, play hard and guard people, we’ll be okay.”
Depending on the weather, Alton is scheduled to play the Chaminade Red Devils at 7:30 tonight.
Rivers led Alton with 15 points, which is a career-high. Malik Smith tallied 11 points, and Moory Woods chipped in ten. Donovan Clay and Andrew Jones both finished with eight.
The Redbirds improve their record to 12-8.
“Coach (Eric Smith) told us we had to play a lot harder. That was about it,” Rivers said. “We had to keep our head in the game and share the ball. This is a big win. It tells us a lot. We’ve got to keep playing hard and working hard at practice.”
“[Rivers is] a really good player. He is,” Alton coach Eric Smith said of Rivers. “He’s a really skilled kid, and he has some size that helps us out.”
Trinity was led by a game-high of 16 points by Kalkbrenner, and Texas football commit Marcus Washington. Illinois football commit Isaiah Williams finished with 15 points, and T.J. Rush added 11.
They fall to 13-1 on the season.
“It was a great game. I like to be in games like this because they’re so far and few between,” Trinity head coach Jeff McCaw said. “I thought we played lousy, but it still was a good game, and maybe Alton played one of their better games.”
After a close first quarter, the Titans led 17-15 and were on a 4-0 run. They would expand that run to 26-9 while Clay picked up his second foul early and would sit the rest of the half. Meanwhile, Kalkbrenner scored 13 points in the first half and couldn’t be stopped. The Titans did a stellar job of getting to the basket and shot 17-of-27 (62 percent) from the field in the first half.
“The game consists of momentum. You need these games to be able to manage these situations,” McCaw said. “Throughout the course of the season, we’ve been probably winning (games) by 15, 20 points. I like to see games decided by one or two plays. Plays could go either way, and the outcome could be different for either team.”
After halftime, the momentum would shift Alton’s way starting with a Malik Smith mid-range basket, and then they went from there.
“Besides just yelling and screaming, we really didn’t change anything,” Smith said. “Our kids just made a little bit more of an effort to focus on some of the things we talked to them about leading into the game. We didn’t have the approach we wanted at the beginning.”
Having shot 10-of-26 (38 percent) from the field in the first half, the Redbirds form improved to nearly the same Trinity had in the first half at 17-of-28.
Alton outscored Trinity 23-9 in the third quarter and cut the lead deficit to one point at 48-47.
“The game consisted of energy. Once the game started to shift to the opposing team, which is Alton, their momentum started to carry,” McCaw said. They actually started making shots and plays at the basket. Then it became difficult to slow them down. So they pretty much scored on every possession they had.”
A three-pointer by Woods gave Alton a 50-48 lead and from there on out it was a slugfest.
The Redbirds built up a four-point lead, but Williams drained back-to-back triples to tie the game and then another three from NBA range that gave his team a slim one-point lead.
A layup by Woods put Alton on top 62-61, but moments later Washington made of 1-of-2 foul shots to tie the game up with under 45 seconds to play.
After Rivers made the go-ahead shot in the final 15 seconds, Williams drove to the basket and missed a tightly contested shot. Clay grabbed the rebound and rifled a full-court pass to a wide-open Rivers, who was then intentionally fouled by while going up for a dunk with 1.1 seconds left.
Trinity would improbably get one last chance.
Rivers missed both of his free throws, and on Alton’s ensuing inbounds pass under the Titans basket, Williams forced a steal, called timeout as the buzzer sounded, but was rewarded a timeout with 0.3 seconds to play. The Titans were able to inbound to Rashad Weekly from three-quarters away from the basket, but his shot was off target.
“We’ve got some resilient, tough-minded kids, but I think the issue that got us into the game was the issue that caused us the problem in the beginning,” Smith said. [Trinty’s] tough, and they’re a big, strong, physical team. They’ve got those football kids. They got rebounds; they pulled any loose balls, they just took out of our hands. We’ve had a handful of games where we’ve made a living taking charges, and we really didn’t do too much of that at all. We did a better job in the second half.”
