COLLINSVILLE – Winning a basketball game at Collinsville’s Fletcher Gym is, generally speaking, not the easiest of tasks. When a team’s trying to win without one of its’ best players, however, the assignment becomes that much harder.
Edwardsville’s basketball team was facing that tough an assignment at Fletcher Gym Tuesday night, having to play without A.J. Epenesa, who was unavailable under IHSA rules because of a pair of technical fouls he was issued during the Tigers’ win at Granite City Friday night.
The Tigers, though, shook that off and a spirited effort from the Kahoks to bounce back and go to 11-0 in the Southwestern Conference (20-4 overall) with a 57-54 overtime win Tuesday night. The Kahoks fell to 9-16 overall, 1-10 in the league.
“I thought our guys did a lot of things well tonight; I thought Collinsville played a good game,” said Tiger coach Mike Waldo. “They were hard to defend because they had a lot of guys make threes, and I’m not sure how many guys made threes but a lot of them made threes, and it’s hard to defend a team when you’ve got five guys making threes the way they did.
“But I thought our guys did a very good job defensively, even with them hard to defend.”
The Tigers did get out to an early lead, Oliver Stephen scoring EHS’ first eight points of the night and taking a 19-13 lead at quarter time. The Kahoks, though, bounced back and pulled even with the Tigers, taking an even 26-26 score into the locker rooms at the long break.
Collinsville even took a small lead on the Tigers as the third quarter went on, the Kahoks forging ahead 41-36 at one point in the third term behind some big three-point shots from Tommy Maden and Zach Flora as the term went on. Collinsville’s shooting didn’t shake the Tigers, though, and some big baskets from Mark Smith and Caleb Strohmeier pulled the Tigers to 41-40 down at three-quarter time.
Edwardsville’s defense remained stout, coming up with steals and stops that didn’t let the Kahoks get on big runs. “Chrys Colley had an excellent game defensively and offensively,” Waldo said. “I thought he did a great job tonight; I thought Mark Smith played a great floor game, taking opportunities when they were there and making the right pass; Mark did a lot of things well against their defense.
“In fact, all of our guys played good. Oliver (Stephen) did a great job, (Caleb) Strohmeier, all of our guys played good and we had to tonight because, as I said, Collinsville played a good game.”
Kahok coach Darin Lee felt the same way. “They made some shots when they needed to make them,” Lee said. “Mark Smith made a big shot; we played a little better, we did a good job of sharing the basketball.”
Smith played a key role for the Tigers with a 26-point night, making big shots when the Tigers really needed them, both inside and outside. The Kahoks countered with some big scores from Maden and Flora and also Jake Hall down the stretch, as Stephen forced overtime with three free-throws in the closing stages of the final term.
Maden scored the first points of OT with 1:12 left to put the Kahoks ahead 54-52, but a three-point shot from Smith put EHS back on top and then Green hit both ends of a one-and-one with 17.7 seconds left in OT for the final margin of victory for the Tigers.
Stephen ended up with 12 points on the night and Green had 11 for the Tigers; Maden and Flora had 13 points each for the Kahoks, with Sam Webb adding 10.
Edwardsville travels to Alton next with a chance to clinch the league championship outright; tip is set for 7:30 p.m. Friday.
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