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EDWARDSVILLE – Marquette Catholic pushed to its fourth straight win after a 10-point run at the start of the Metro East Lutheran Thanksgiving Turkey Tipoff Tournament final on Saturday night. The final tally was 55-39 Explorers over the Knights.
MEL dropped to 3-1, but had an excellent tournament overall.
“They kind of settled down, settled in a little bit and I think the fouls really took us out of the momentum,” Medford said. “Whenever we got seven fouls in the first quarter, I think it really slowed us down a little bit, slowed down the tempo a little bit.
“Yeah, we won – I told the kids in there, 'hey, we're happy we won a championship, but this is a team that, right now, is going to be prepared to win a regional in (IHSA Class) 3A right now' – we've got a long way to go; we know that, there's going to be some ups and downs, we've still got some kids who are still new to the varsity scene, but we've got a lot of kids who are back and we expect a lot more out of those guys.”
“We were in the locker room talking to the guys, and we said, 'the win last night felt like a loss and the loss tonight felt like a win',” Smith said. “I really, really thought our kids came out and gave themselves every opportunity to compete – I really believe that they felt, in their heart, they were going to beat them.
“They're a great, great ball club; I think they lost one kid from last year from the super-sectional. We've been talking about that whole competitive nature; I think the kids saw tonight that they can compete with teams like that, and that's what we need – we need them to believe that this is how you play, this is what you have to do to compete with teams at that high level.”
The Explorers got out of the gates pretty quickly, grabbing a 10-0 lead within the first two-and-a-half minutes before the Knights scored their first point of the contest. It looked as though the Explorers were going to a huge win before the Knights battled back and got the score to 16-6 at quarter time.
“When they finally decided that, 'OK, what coach is saying is correct – we can play with these guys if we follow what he says',” Smith said, “it's easy; you can't dribble through what they're going to do – stay poised. They're going to trap you, they're going to run and jump because that's what they do.
“When they realized it's not going to work, they're backing up – they didn't do it for the rest of the game.”
The Explorers maintained a lead the rest of the way, though the Knights made some runs at them that didn't get quite over the hump, Marquette leading 26-16 at the half and 42-28 at three-quarter time. Sammy Green led all scorers with 19 points for MCHS, with Reagan Snider adding 14 and Nick Hemann 10 while holding eventual tournament MVP Jake Hall to four points on the night; Jonah Ogden led MEL with 14 points while DaMonte Bean added eight points on the night.
Next up for the Explorers is their home opener at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday against Civic Memorial coming off the Eagles' win in the Stove Top Stuffing Classic Saturday night and a 7:30 p.m. Prairie State Conference opener against Nokomis at home; the Knights host Lutheran North at 7:30 p.m. Thursday before heading to Marquette for a 7:30 p.m. Dec. 5 clash with the Explorers.
