SEE INTERVIEW WITH EDWARDSVILLE COACH MIKE WALDO:
VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH STAR OF GAME TIGERS’ CALEB STROHMEIER:
COLLINSVILLE – Collinsville’s Ray’Sean Taylor had tied Tuesday night’s Collinsville-Edwardsville Southwestern Conference boys basketball game at 46-46 with a drive to the basket with 6:10 left in the final quarter.
Edwardsville inbounded the ball and brought it to midcourt.
Then they held it at midcourt. And held it. And held it.
Then the Tigers called a time out with 2:23 left to plan out what they were going to do next.
The Tigers then ran off some more clock until the final seconds of the game before running a play that saw Caleb Strohmeier score with 2.8 seconds to go to give the Tigers a 48-46 win over the Kahoks at Virgil Fletcher Gym to take their record to 14-8 on the year, 7-4 in the SWC; the Kahoks fell to 15-11 overall, 3-8 in the league.
“I thought did a great job,” said Tiger coach Mike Waldo. “They were hard to play against. They were really hard to defend because they made a lot of perimeter shots; they did a really good job of putting us in bad spots because of their personnel, so I think for us to get a win on the road against a team that plays so well is a really good win.”
Waldo was pleased with the Tigers’ execution on the night. “I thought we executed a lot of good things in the game,” Waldo said. “I thought defensively, we did a good job of giving them what we wanted to give them; the problem was that they made a lot of baskets.
“I thought offensively, we executed a lot of good things against a good defense; they played a good box-and-one (defense) and they have a lot of big, rangy guys in it and I thought we executed a lot of good things against that, and of course, Jack (Marinko made a good play at the end and Caleb got the basket.”
The game started out even before the Kahoks pulled a way a bit in the opening quarter, Collinsville getting to a 19-13 quarter-time lead; Edwardsville responded with scores from Marinko and Strohmeier to pull even at the half at 30-30; Jalen Tuggle opened the second half with a three-point shot to put the Tigers ahead, with Edwardsville getting small leads through most of the quarter, with the Kahoks’ Marshall Harrison and Bailey McGovern both keeping things close for the Kahoks, with the Kahoks holding a 43-42 lead at three-quarter time.
The final quarter started with the game being tied a couple of times, Taylor tying the game for the final time with 6:10 to go before the Tigers gained possession after a Kahok score and holding the ball for 3:37 before calling time. The Tigers then ran their delay game to get the clock down to under 10 seconds before Marinko fired a shot and Strohmeier moved inside to recover the ball and banked it in for what proved to be the winning score.
Collinsville called time out twice in a row before Edwardsville called time, all with 2.1 seconds left; McGovern then inbounded the ball, but Marinko intercepted the long inbounds pass and ran out the clock for the win.
Marinko led the Tigers with 18 points, with Strohmeier adding 17 and Tuggle nine on the night; McGovern led the Kahoks with 15 points, with Taylor adding 14 and Braeden Lemp six.
Next up for EHS is a league game at Alton at 7:30 p.m. Friday before closing out the regular season at home against O’Fallon at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 20 and Belleville East at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 23. The pairings and schedules for the IHSA Class 4A regionals and sectionals will be announced late Friday afternoon on the IHSA web site.
