COLLINSVILLE – Edwardsville’s boys basketball team held off Lincoln 42-32 in Thursday morning’s Collinsville-Prairie Farms Holiday Classic tournament quarterfinal clash and advanced to tonight’s semifinal game against Springfield Southeast.
Southeast moved into the semis with a 67-57 win over Decatur Eisenhower in the first quarterfinal game of the day; the Tiger-Spartan game gets under way at 6:30 p.m., with the winner moving into the final at 7:30 p.m. Friday. The third-place contest gets under way at 6 p.m. Friday.
The Tigers improved to 9-1 on the season with the win, but it wasn’t the easiest of wins. “Lincoln is a hard team to defend,” said Tiger coach Mike Waldo. “They run a lot of good sets and they have a lot of guys who can play. With the short time to prepare, I think if you try to go straight up man-to-man against a team like them, they’re going to grill you.
“We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare, so we thought we’d do that today.”
Waldo gave credit to Caleb Strohmeier and Jack Marinko for good games. “I thought Strohmeier and Jack played really played good and really worked hard today to play. I thought they did a great job defensively and it took a great effort on both of those guys’ part to do what they did.
“Their defense is excellent and you don’t see it much. When you play against a defense you don’t see and they’re as good at as they are, that’s hard to play against. That’s a great program; they play great, they’ve got good coaches and their kids work hard. I think to be able to win today was really a good thing.”
Lincoln got the first points of the game from behind the three-point arc, but the Tigers responded by taking the lead and never relinquishing it. The Railsplitters played a deliberate pace and not letting the Tigers control the ball and run their offense to stay within striking distance of Edwardsville.
The Tigers held a 16-11 lead at the half and slowly built it up, leading at one point late in the third period 28-17; Lincoln pulled to within six a couple of times in the second half, but could never come any closer as the Tigers held the Railers at bay.
Oliver Stephen hit four times from behind the three-point arc to add to his nine from the opening-round win over McCluer North Wednesday; he finished with a team-high 13 points. Mark Smith scored 12 points, A.J. Epenesa 11 and Strohmeier six. Nolan Hullinger and Ben Grunder led Lincoln with 11 points each; Titus Cannon had six, Drew Bacon three and Isaiah Bowers one.
In Thursday’s other quarterfinal games, East St. Louis defeated Decatur MacArthur 93-75 to move in tonight’s 8 p.m. semifinal match; they’ll play the Quincy-Belleville Althoff winner for a berth in the final. The Crusaders led the Blue Devils 14-11 at quarter time of that game.
