HIGHLAND – Edwardsville got its boys basketball season off to a good start Monday night.
Especially Oliver Stephen and Mark Smith.
Stephen hit from outside the three-point arc 10 times and scored 34 points and Smith added 22 points as the Tigers defeated Waterloo 80-52 on the opening night of the Battling Bulldog Thanksgiving Tournament at Highland High School. The 1-0 Tigers will take on Carbondale, 40-35 winners over Highland in the tournament opener, at 6:30 p.m. this evening; the tournament runs through Saturday night. In the evening’s other game, Belleville Althoff downed O’Fallon 88-68.
Considering the Tigers had only been practicing for two weeks heading into the game, EHS coach Mike Waldo was happy with the team’s execution. “I thought we executed well a lot of the things we’ve been working on early in the year,” Waldo said. “We’ve only been practicing two weeks, so it’s hard to have a lot of things in and be good at a lot of things, but I think the things we practiced, I thought we did a good job of executing tonight.
“I thought we did a good job of passing the ball and screening and finding open players against their different defenses. (Dylan Hunt)’s a good player for them, and once Caleb Strohmeier started guarding him, I don’t think he scored again, which I thought was a really big part of the game. I thought Caleb’s defense was really good.”
Stephen had a hot hand from the start, going 10-for-12 from behind the arc and hitting all four free-throw tries he had on the night. “Making the first shot always helps, but I have to give a shout-out to my teammates for finding me and screening to get me open. I felt like a lot of us were all on tonight.”
Stephen and Smith have played together since they were in fourth grade and the experience showed. “We’ve been playing since fourth grade,” Stephen said. “The chemistry’s been there for a long time, so we know where we’re going to be on the floor.”
“Oliver did a good job of moving without the ball,” Waldo said. “He did a good job of getting open; I thought we did a good job of screening and we passed the ball well. I thought Mark had an excellent game tonight; he did a good job of passing the ball, he did a good job defensively and did a good job of taking the break when it was there and running the offense when it wasn’t.”
Jack Marinko stood out for the Tigers as well, Waldo thought. “I thought Jack played well,” Waldo said. “He did a lot of things well defensively and did a good job of making shots when he was open.
“We needed some guys tonight because we had some fouls; I thought Jackson Best did some things good for us and I thought (Zach) Doornink played some good minutes off the bench too.”
The Tigers got on a roll in the opening term after the first couple of minutes, storming out to a 29-10 quarter-time lead and expanding it to 47-26 at the long break behind Stephen’s and Smith’s shooting. Doornink and Strohmeier each had six points for the Tigers, with Marinko and Malik Robinson each getting five points and Matt Stopka two points; Strohmeier had nine rebounds for the Tigers, with Smith getting eight rebounds and adding 13 assists. Hunt led Waterloo with 15 points and seven rebounds, while Ben Huels had 13 points.
Following tonight’s game against the Terriers, Edwardsville meets host Highland at 8 p.m Friday and Althoff at 8 p.m. Saturday.
