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EDWARDSVILLE – To say Edwardsville's Jack Marinko was on fire Tuesday night might be a bit of an understatement.
The senior for Edwardsville seemingly couldn't miss in EHS' home opener against the St. Louis Public High League's Soldan International Studies at Lucco-Jackson Gym. Everything he threw up seemed to find the range – including seven three-point shots on the evening - and as things turned out, Edwardsville needed every one of Marinko's 42 points.
Soldan refused to go away and kept coming at Edwardsville, tying the game a couple of times in the late going before Edwardsville found a way to hold Soldan off to take a 64-60 win to go to 2-0 on the year. Soldan fell to 1-3 on the season with the loss.
“That's a good team we played,” said EHS coach Mike Waldo. “They've got athletes and they made a lot of shots tonight; they have guys who are fast going to the basket and shoot threes – that's hard to defend, but I thought we did a good job most of the game of making it hard on them to get easy points and I thought we did a lot of good things on offense tonight.”
Waldo thinks Marinko is doing a good job of many things related to the game that helps not only himself, but his team.
“Jack does a real good job of reading things that are open,” Waldo said, “ and we did a good job tonight of helping him get open and he did a good job of taking advantage of that; I thought Malik (Robinson) mad a lot of good passes to him and I thought we did a really good job of looking for him; I thought he did a very good job.
“Jack's worked hard in the weight room to get quicker, faster and stronger.”
Senior Caleb Strohmeier had some key scores down the stretch to help hold off Soldan; he ended up with 16 points and 14 rebounds on the night.
“I thought Caleb did a lot of good things tonight,” Waldo said. “I thought his post defense was good, his rebounding was good, I thought he made some good plays in the low post; I thought he had an excellent game for us at both ends of the floor.”
Soldan stayed close to Edwardsville early on, EHS holding a 12-11 lead at quarter time before Soldan took a 31-29 lead at the half, Soldan having a significant lead at times in the second period before an Edwardsville run put them atop Soldan 41-31 with about five minutes left in the third; back came Soldan, pulling to 45-43 at the buzzer thanks to a pair of Caleb Helm free throws. Edwardsville held off Soldan early in the final quarter when Marinko hit a pair of baskets, but a couple of three-balls from Jesse Little and James Little pulled Soldan to a 50-50 tie midway through the final quarter.
The two teams traded scores that got the game to 55-55 before Strohmeier stepped up from the top of the three-point arc with 49 seconds to go and hit from outside to put Edwardsville ahead at 58-55 before Marinko hit on a traditional three-point play with 28.7 seconds left to extend the lead to 61-55; Soldan could only get as close 61-58 as Edwardsville found a way to hold off a late Soldan charge.
Jesse Little led Soldan with 23 points on the night with Phillip March adding 16.
Next up for Edwardsville is an 8 p.m. Saturday contest with Belleville West at SIU-Edwardsville's Vadalebene Center as the nightcap for the second SWC at the E showcase event; Alton takes on Granite City at 3:30 p.m. in the opener, followed by Collinsville meeting O'Fallon at 5 p.m. and East St. Louis clashing with Belleville East at 6:30 p.m. prior to the Edwardsville-West clash.
