COLLINSVILLE – Alton High senior forward Donovan Clay had himself a game in the IHSA Class 4A regional final Friday night at Collinsville’s Vergil Fletcher Gym.
Clay was the game’s leading scorer with 20 points, and defensively held the Kahoks’ top player, Ray’Sean Taylor, to 10 as the Redbirds defeated Collinsville 58-48 to take the title and move on to the East Moline United sectional next week.
The game plan was very simple: Stop Taylor and play together as a team.
“It was definitely trying to stop Ray, and we executed on that,” Clay said in a postgame interview, “because he’s a really good player, honestly. But just coming in to play hard and play together, get the W.”
To hold Taylor, one of the St. Louis area’s best players, to 10 points is quite an accomplishment, and Clay took much pride in playing against him.
“Oh yeah, for sure,” Clay said. “He’s a really good player. I love playing against the good players, and it was just a lot of fun.”
Redbird coach Eric Smith commented that Clay does take a lot of pride in guarding the other team’s best player, and Clay himself had fun in doing that as well.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Clay said. “I love guarding the best players. You’ve got to have a thing in you, like a dog, you want to go out there and play, you want to go out there and play defense, you want to go out there and just have fun.”
Everything came together at the right time for the Redbirds, who clicked on all cylinders in getting the win.
“Yeah, everything came together,” Clay said. “I mean, we were playing together, we got some easy backdoors, some great plays, some great passes going to the hole, passing the ball. We just played together, and it was a really good game.”
Alton now advances to a semifinal game Tuesday night against Belleville West, which will be played at Edwardsville’s Lucco-Jackson Gym in a 7 p.m. tip-off. Clay expects much from the Maroons.
“I expect a lot,” Clay said. “We’re going to come hard like we did last time. We’re definitely going to watch the film, get in the gym and work as hard as we can so we can get to the sectional championship.”
And Clay is looking forward to playing against perhaps the state’s best player in E.J. Liddell, just one of many good players in the Southwestern Conference.
“Oh, yeah, I love playing E.J.,” Clay said. “I mean, it’s a lot of fun guarding one of the best players in our conference. It’s a lot of fun; we’ve got a lot of good people in our conference. I just love guarding them all.”
