ALTON – Tuesday night marked the halfway point of the Southwestern Conference gauntlet for the Alton High School boys basketball team as it hosted Belleville East.
The teams were neck and neck throughout the first quarter, but the Redbirds gradually grew to a comfortable lead and held off the Lancers for a 57-47 win.
With the result, Alton improves to 10-6 overall and 5-1 in the SWC.
“We’re halfway through and it feels like we’ve played 20 of them,” Alton head coach Dylan Dudley said postgame. “We’ll take where we’re at. It’s a hell of a lot better to be 5-1 instead of 1-5, I know that much.”
“I like that we’ve won games and we’re learning from our wins as opposed to trying to learn from losses, that says a lot about those guys in the locker room and their competitive character to try and hang in there and do right,” Dudley added.
It was Alton’s second straight win, having beaten O’Fallon in come-from-behind fashion last Friday. Meanwhile, it was East’s fourth straight loss as it falls to 8-8 on the season and 1-5 in the conference.
East St. Louis, Alton’s lone conference loss, improved to 6-0 in the SWC on Tuesday after winning 74-49 at Collinsville, who have yet to win a SWC game. The Edwardsville Tigers are 4-2 midway through their conference slate.
“Good conference win, we did what we’re supposed to do,” Dudley said. “Tuesday nights are hard. You have to win the Tuesday night games to have a chance later in February and March.”
The Redbirds are doing a fine job of giving themselves a chance to win the program’s first conference title since 2007.
But no Southwestern Conference game comes easy.
And that was the case early on against the Lancers.
Alton got off to a 7-4 lead thanks to a three-pointer and two free throws from Jamarion Green and a basket from O’Bryant Brown. But then East used a quick 7-0 run to go ahead 11-7. The teams swapped the lead before Semaj Stampley’s triple sparked a 7-2 run to close the first quarter and give the Redbirds a 19-15 lead.
Alton opened the second on a similar 7-3 run, extending its advantage to 26-18 and forcing East into a timeout with 3:58 to go in the half. The Redbirds outscored the Lancers 12-7 in the second quarter to go ahead 31-22 at halftime.
Green scored 14 of his total 16 points in the first half, capping it off with back-to-back baskets. Ryan Howard finished the game with 21 points, leading all scorers.
“I thought Jamarion’s pre-game focus, and I thought Ryan’s focus in the locker room before the game was really good,” Dudley said. “We made some changes on how we get focused before the games; we did some different things. I just thought the look on [Green’s] face pregame was really good, and you saw the effect.”
It was a much better approach than last Friday’s game against O’Fallon where Alton got off to a slow start, trailing the Panthers 16-14 after the first quarter and 32-26 at the half.
“I liked our pre-game approach,” Dudley said after Tuesday’s win. “I think what you saw tonight was, no disrespect to them, I think we just played down to the level of our competition. I think [Belleville East] kind of lulled us to sleep, which, credit to them.”
East hung around throughout the second half as Alton never delivered that knockout punch to Dudley’s dismay.
The Redbirds led by as much as 12 points midway through the third quarter at 40-28 but let the Lancers stay within striking distance. The Lancers breathed life, cutting the deficit to six points at 48-42, demanding Alton take a timeout to regroup with 2:37 left to go in the game.
Right out of that timeout, Howard drilled what would go on to be a dagger three as the Redbirds out scored East 8-5 down the stretch.
Howard and Green led Alton in double figures, but it also got eight points from Stampley, six points from Brown, and five points from Tysean Jones.
East was led by Troy Alexander with 12 points and Kenny Wilson with 10.
Both teams will be back in conference action on Friday, January 16. The Lancers travel to O’Fallon while the Redbirds host Collinsville. Both games start at 7:30 p.m.
