EDWARDSVILLE – Piasa Southwestern has some big holes to fill on its boys basketball team this season.
The Piasa Birds are coming off a 21-7 (6-2 in the South Central Conference) 2014-15 season, one that was marked by the championship of the Metro East Lutheran Thanksgiving Turkey Tipoff Classic and the Macoupin County Championship and a second-place finish at the Columbia-Freeburg Holiday Tournament. The season ended on a stunning note, however, when Roxana upset the Birds in overtime in the final of their own IHSA Class 2A regional.
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Southwestern opened defense of their MEL title Monday night with a 56-37 win over Marissa, a game where the Meteors scored the first four points of the game but the Piasa Birds responded by scoring the next 13 points of the game to take control.
“It was a good start,” said Southwestern coach Jason Darr. “Anytime that many players (as they did), the first game is always kind of a question mark, but we had some young kids step up and some of our older guys, (Collin) Baumgartner, stepped up and had a huge night with 20 rebounds, and that's what we've got to have out of him.
“We had a lot of guys step up and a lot of guys scored. Their No. 3 (Kyle Smith) is a great player for them; we knew that coming in and I thought we did a decent job on him. He's going to get his points, but we limited him as best as we could, so it was a good night.”
The initial 13-point run at the start of the game wasn't surprising to Darr. “That's kind of what we do,” Darr said. “We've been that kind of team the past two years where we go on long runs; when we execute on offense, we score points. When we come down and chuck shots into the air, we seem to struggle at times, but I thought it was a good team win.
“We played eight or nine guys the whole game and we were able to get some guys a lot of quality playing time.”
Baumgartner led the way for the Birds with a team high 15 points; Justin Bailey added 12 points and Graham Bachman scored eight. The Meteors were led by Smith's game-high 26 points, with Tony Stoddard adding seven.
The Piasa Birds will try to avenge their regional loss to the Shells when the two teams clash at 7 p.m. Wednesday in MEL's main gym to close out group play; the tournament concludes with bracket play Friday and Saturday in three levels.
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