SALEM – It's getting to be old hat for Edwardsville and Centralia.
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The Tigers and Orphans will be taking each other on in Saturday night's 67th Salem Invitational basketball tournament final for the seventh year in a row after the Tigers got 26 points from Jack Marinko and 10 points and 10 rebounds from R.J. Wilson as the Tigers defeated the host Wildcats 55-39 Friday night and the Orphans defeated Mount Vernon 52-44 in the game leading into the Tigers' game.
Saturday's final is set for 8:30 p.m.; the Tigers have won all but one of the six previous championship games against the Orphans, the exception coming in 2016. The Tigers enter the game at 12-5 on the year, while the Wildcats tumbled to 9-8.
“They're very, very well-coached,” said Tiger coach Mike Waldo of the Wildcats. “They really do a lot of things well; a lot of things they ran, they executed well and they're really hard to defend. Early in the game, we just had trouble defending all their actions – as the game went on, we got a little better with that, but I thought we did a good job at both ends of the floor tonight of making good plays at both ends.”
Waldo also singled out Jaylon Tuggle for playing an outstanding game. “Jaylon's been outstanding for us defensively,” Waldo said. “He also does a good job offensively; tonight, he made some shots, but he can do that. He works at it and makes a lot of baskets in practice.
“He definitely can make baskets, so he played an excellent game.”
Edwardsville pretty much put the game away in the third quarter when they threw a shutout on the Wildcats to extend a 27-22 halftime lead to 43-22, thanks to some well-executed plays on both ends of the floor. “I thought my guys played hard and executed a lot of things well,” Waldo said. “They had a few open looks that didn't get in; sometimes that snowballs on you, but I thought we did a lot of things well.
“I thought in the second half, we did a good job of getting a good shot at the basket on most of our possessions; when you do that, you don't give up many transition baskets because they don't get a chance to set up their defense. It was a combination of us executing offensively and getting a good shot at the basket every trip coupled with us playing good on defense.”
Tuggle added eight points for the Tigers while Malik Robinson had five; the Wildcats were led by Dawson Linder and Brett Whitney with eight points each, with Cord Brown and Jacob Harness adding five each on the night.
