EDWARDSVILLE – Senior guard Chris Hartrich led the way with 16 points, while tournament MVP Nick Hemann added 12 as Marquette Catholic won its second consecutive Metro-East Lutheran Turkey Tip-Off Tournament championship with a 50-37 win over the host Knights in Saturday night’s final at Thomas Hooks Gymnasium.
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The Explorers were able to shut down Metro-East’s inside game, holding DaMonte Bean to nine points and A.J. Smith to five in winning the title.
Marquette’s defensive effort was one of the biggest reasons why they were able to win the championship.
“You know, I’ve been here for nine years,” said Explorer coach Steve Medford, “and if they can’t score, they can’t win. And that’s been my theory, that’s what I’ve done, and there’s one thing I’ve done, and I will stand for is that we’re going to be a defensive team that’s going to try to rebound the basketball really well, and those type of things that we’ve done in our practices, if you say that’s what I’m going to make you do, that’s one thing I’ll make you do, make sure you play defense. That’s what we’ve done for nine years, and this is a new group, a little bit younger, a little bit more inexperienced, but they did guard really well tonight. I thought they did a good job on the post, they did a good job on the ball screens, a great job on the help side.”
And every time the Knights would look like they would make a run to get closer, Marquette had the answers, bringing the lead back to double figures each time.
“You know, we did,” Medford said. “And I tell you, this is a team that this year, we’re going to have to rely on our defense a lot, because in that situation, where we have six points, all of a sudden, we go into those lulls where we can’t score for three or four minutes. I thought we did respond really well to it, we ’re patient. We didn’t execute really well, but we’ll get better.”
And that the Explorers’ post players are very athletic, which helped them against Metro-East’s post players.
“That was huge, getting Bean with some foul trouble,” Medford said. “Smith made kind of, maybe a silly foul before the half, getting his third foul, and that helped. Those two kids are long, and they’re athletic, and they’re strong, and they’re physical and they can kick your butt on the boards. So it was big, to try to get those kids into foul trouble and get them out of the game.”
The Knights did have some problems running their offense and could have executed better.
“One of the things that we have to be able to do is to be able to find five guys that can run the offense for us, and be effective on the offensive end,” said Metro-East coach Anthony Smith. “The second half, I thought we did a really good job of containing them, and doing some things we should do, caused turnovers, we were right there, down by eight, we take an unorthodox three off the break. We’ve got to be better as far as executing on the offensive end. I don’t know if we were ever out of the game, as much as we had opportunities to score and cut the deficit, we go and do individual accolade things, which championship teams don’t do. The pros run offenses.”
Smith agreed that every time the Knights had a chance to build momentum by getting stops defensively, Marquette was able to get back into it.
“We get a stop, we go down, we’re down by eight,” Smith said, “we get a stop, we go down, we missed a free throw. We get a stop, we go back down, and those things build up after momentum goes, and like, OK. We’ve got to be able to get a stop and score, get a stop and score, and give ourselves an opportunity. And we played hard; I will never say we never played hard. But playing hard and being able to execute and win games is what it’s about. We’re talented; we’ve got plenty of talent on the team. But the problem is that it’s all spread out. Not everybody’s playing for Metro-East Lutheran. Everybody has to be playing for Metro-East Lutheran High School. And until that happens, we’re going to struggle, no matter how talented that we are. We’re going to struggle.”
The Explorers scored the game’s first five points, with Hartrich getting a steal and score, a good pass inside to score and a free throw before Jason Williams, Jr. hit a foul line jumper to make it 5-2. Brett Terry then scored back-to-back baskets to extend the Marquette lead before a pair of Williams free throws and a three from Cooper Krone cut the lead to 9-7. The Explorers scored seven of the quarter’s last nine points, getting baskets from Hemann and Nate Hall and a Hall three from up top to take a 16-9 lead at quarter time.
Hemann scored in the lane at the start of the second, but a Williams three-point play cut the lead to 18-12. After exchanging threes, Spencer Cox hit inside in traffic to expand the Explorer lead to 23-15. The Knights had chances to cut into the lead, but couldn’t do so as the half ended in favor of Marquette by the 23-15 score.
Neither team was able to score in the first three minutes of the second half, but a trey from Hartrich broke the ice and gave the Explorers a 26-16 lead. Bean was able to score in the lane to cut it to eight, but another Hartrich three made it 29-18 before a Bean basket and a three from Krone cut the deficit to six. Marquette then scored five straight points after a Bean basket cut the lead again to eight, getting a trey from Will Dixon and a basket from Hall inside to make it 36-25 Marquette after three.
In the final quarter, free throws made a huge difference, with the Explorers hitting eight of ten at the line, and also getting huge baskets from Hemann and Dixon. Bean fouled out with 2:07 left, as did Smith with 1:02 to go, and the Explorers were able to go on to the 50-37 win.
Smith felt that the Explorers understood their roles better, pointing out point guard Cortez Harris as an example.
“They do a very good job of understanding roles,” Smith said. “Like for me, I know that everybody’s out there to score and score and score, and the MVP for me on that team is the point guard, number two. I think he took one shot the whole game, and maybe one layup, but he understood his role like he distributed. There was maybe plenty of times I thought he had layups and took shots, but he didn’t. He was doing what he does best, which is run the team. I know what my role is; my role is to run the team. I’m going to run this and make sure we get the best shot, get it to the scorers, or get it to whoever we need to get it to. And that’s what he did, so those are different. For us, the MVP is the point guard for them; he’s a kid that understands what he needs to do.”
The Knights were three for 17 from three-point range, a stat that doesn’t bode well for the team.
“Oh, of course,” Smith said. “And again, and I was telling my kids that. You shoot three balls, and you live and die with it, you die with it. Three for 17 when we got a 6’ 5” and a 6’ 6” kid in the post, but we’re taking those shots because they want to take them. And we have to figure out guys that want to play in the system and run our system because we work on it. We’ve been doing this for 22 years, you have to be able to run an offense. You have to be able to make plays make teams play defense. It doesn’t hurt Alton Marquette that we’re shooting threes. They take them and go back down and they get an opportunity because they don’t have to do anything to stop that.”
Medford is very proud of Hemann for being named the MVP of the tournament.
“Yeah, Nick’s a great kid,” Medford said. “Nick deserves everything that comes his way, he’s a phenomenal player, he’s been a great player for us for all four years, and it’s now his and Chris Hartrich’s time to shine, and we’re expecting a lot of great things from those two guys.”
And the Explorers are off to a 4-0 start, but Medford also knows there’s plenty of work ahead for his young team.
“it’s a great start, especially as young as we are,” Medford said. “I know a lot of people kind of think ‘wow, Marquette’s going to continue to win, continue to win, continue to win.’ But it’s hard to do. It’s hard to do. We’ve got different kids, different personnel. The good thing is we’ve got a little bit of a culture at Marquette. And that culture is ‘hey, we expect to win, we’re going to defend, we’re going to rebound, we’re going to do the little things right to try to win games.’ And we’ve got another group of kids that we think we can do that.”
The Knights are 3-1 to start and have won some battles. But Smith is looking to the long term.
“We’ve won a few battles here that maybe we should win,” Smith said. “We’re talented enough to win games we should win, but we’re never going to win the war.”
Chris Rhodes also contributed to this story.
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