EDWARDSVILLE – Jamison White guided East St. Louis with a game-high 23 points, including multiple slam dunks in a 60-45 win over Edwardsville on Friday night, Jan. 16, 2026, at Edwardsville in front of a capacity crowd.
Alex Johnson had 19 points for East St. Louis and Phillip Jones came up with 13 points.
The Flyers played very well, except for a part of the fourth quarter where East Side lost its focus, and it helped to allow the Tigers to crawl back into the game.
“We did alright,” said Flyers’ coach Mark Chambers. “We just lost our focus in the second half; that’s the problem we’ve been having. We’re getting out to big leads, and then, having to maintain that. So, we’ write on the board 32 minutes of focus. And we didn’t do that.
“We had about 24 minutes of focus tonight, and that’s how they got back in. We lost some assignments, they hit some open shots. We knew they would make a run, but we’re doing what we need to do to come out of here with wins, and we’re going to continue to grow, which we’re doing, and that’s about it.”
The Flyers are currently the number one-ranked team in the state’s Associated Press poll, and Chambers agreed it’s a great accomplishment, but it is the games in late February and March that count.
“It’s good,” Chambers said, “but it’s just a ranking. And we don’t play for rankings, unfortunately, but we’ve got to get better as a team, because we want to be playing in that last game in March, and if we’re able to do that, that’s what we want.”
It’s always his goal to be ready for the postseason grind, and Chambers agreed things have gone very well for his club this season.
“Yeah, they’re going well,” Chambers said, “but we still have a lot of little But it’s a lot of things that are fixable, and we’ll try to take care of those things before the playoff run starts. But we’ve got first things first. We have the conference, and we want to make sure we take care of this conference, and we want to make sure we just continue to play well. It’s night in, night out, this is a great environment in Edwardsville, and the kids loved it. So we just want to make sure we take care of our business night in and night out.”
The Flyers are still undefeated in the SWC, and Chambers agreed that’s a very difficult feat to achieve in a league such as the Southwestern Conference.
“No, it’s very hard, it’s very hard,” Chambers said. “Coming into these environments, but it’s been a great experience for my kids, from a young man. They are doing well. This environment was crazy tonight, I loved it, to be honest with you, and we look forward to the rest of the games we have to play in the conference. It’s a great conference, one of the best conferences in the state of Illinois, and I’m proud to be a part of it.”
East Side is now 16-2, and plays at the Southern Illinois Classic Shootout Saturday night against Oklahoma City Frederick Douglass at 6:30 p.m., then plays at Cardinal Ritter College Prep Catholic of St. Louis on Monday, then plays at St. Louis Miller Career Academy Wednesday, both games at 7 p.m.
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
