COLLINSVILLE – When Edwardsville's boys basketball team is hitting on all cylinders, they're a difficult team to stop.
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Such was the case at Collinsville's Fletcher Gym Friday night as Oliver Stephen led the Tigers with 17 points as they scored a 73-40 win over the Kahoks in their home opener to go 6-1 overall, 2-1 in the Southwestern Conference. Collinsville fell to 3-5 overall, 0-3 in the SWC.
“I felt we did a lot of things good offensively,” Tiger coach Mike Waldo said. “I thought Mark (Smith) did a real good job of making the right pass tonight; he does a really good job of finding who's open, and I thought our guys executed a lot of good thing offensively, not only screening well but making the right pass.
“We were able to get some open shots.”
Edwardsville's defense also played a key role as the Tigers pulled away in the second and third quarters. “I thought Collinsville was hard to guard,” Waldo said. “They've got the two really good guards and they had several guys make plays going to the basket and make threes in the first quarter; that's always hard to defend.
“You have a couple of players who can score a lot and the other guys are playing well too; I thought they did a good job with their offense in the first quarter and as the game wore on, I thought we did a good job of playing help defense and taking those guys away.”
“They're a great team; what they did Tuesday night (in the Tigers' win over Belleville East) was incredible to one of the top teams in the state,” said Kahok coach Darin Lee. “We did the same thing in both games this week (the Kahok loss to East St. Louis and Friday's game); we had great first quarters and the first half of the second quarter and then it got away from us.
“We played two Top Ten teams in the state this week and towards the end of the second quarter, both games got away from us. They hit some shots; they can all shoot it, they can all score points. That's a very difficult team to guard.”
Collinsville had a small lead early on before the Tigers broke on top, getting to a 20-16 quarter-time lead before beginning to pull away in the second term thanks to some key shots falling at opportune times to put EHS up 36-23 at the long break before they pulled away for good in the third term.
Caleb Strohmeier had 15 points for the Tigers, A.J. Epenesa 14 and Jack Marinko nine; Austin Knight led the Kahoks with 14 points, followed by Ronnie Midgett's eight and Aaron Molton's six.
Next up for the Tigers is a trip to Granite City's Memorial Gym for a 7:30 p.m. game against the Warriors Dec. 16 before the Tigers make their return to the Collinsville Prairie Farms Holiday Classic Dec. 28-30 at Fletcher Gym.
