EDWARDSVILLE - Metro-East Lutheran head boys basketball coach Anthony Smith was pleased with his squad's comeback effort to get close to Lutheran North Thursday night at MELHS, but that’s not what he wants to see on a nightly basis.
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The key word being comeback.
The Metro-East Lutheran Knights trailed the Lutheran North Crusaders 57-42 at the start of the fourth quarter and used an 18-5 run to cut the deficit down to 62-60. However, that was close as they would get as the Crusaders managed to pull away and escape the Knights with a 77-69 victory in their first game of the season in Edwardsville on Thursday night.
The Knights fell to 3-2.
“That’s the point. We were down 15 going into the fourth quarter and then all of a sudden we decided that we’re good enough to play and then it’s a ball game in the last four minutes of the game. We’re a better ball club than that," Smith said. “Lutheran North is a good team, and they’re going to win some games, but are they 15 points better than us? I don’t know. I know that we didn’t make layups and I don’t even want to know what we did from the free-throw line.”
Cooper Krone tallied 17 points and drilled four three-pointers, while Jason Williams added 16 and sank four triples as well. Despite battling foul trouble for virtually the entire game, Damonte Bean finished with nine points before fouling out in the fourth quarter. Jonah Ogden also scored nine points.
“I gotta get the team involved, and it doesn’t feel like I really did as much because we didn’t take the W at the end. It’s a team game,” Williams said. “Lutheran North got up and down with us and boxed out more. Our defense wasn’t as great, but we stopped them and did as much as we could, but it wasn’t enough.”
Lutheran North’s super sophomore Jordan Nesbitt led all scorers with 22 points. He was paced by Jalen White’s 16 and Tahj Patterson’s 13, including three triples. Smith was particularly impressed with Nesbitt’s performance and has high praise for him.
“I saw him over the summer. We all play in the same summer league together, and I knew he would be a handful,” Smith said. “I didn’t think he would score [22], but he did the small things, and you have to make plays to carry your team. The good thing about him is that he’s long, wide, athletic, and he’s well coached.”
The game was just about always at a high-tempo pace.
Both teams came out shooting hot from the field and traded buckets with Lutheran North leading 19-15 after the first quarter. With the six-foot-five Bean and six-foot-seven Will Barney saddled with fouls, as a result of the Crusaders attacking the basket, Lutheran North started to build on their lead slowly. The Knights led 25-24, but not until a Tahj Patterson three-pointer ignited a 13-2 Crusader run. During that span, the Knights got plenty of open looks from beyond the arc, but couldn’t convert them.
Nesbitt dominated the third quarter for the Crusaders with nine points as he crashed the boards, got second-chance points and even knocked down a three-pointer. Lutheran North’s guards did well at getting in transition and using their speed to create open layups too.
Down 15 heading the into the fourth quarter, the Knights shooting got better, and they also capitalized on some missed opportunities by the Crusaders as well as getting Nesbitt into foul trouble. After Jack Buford, a Division 1 football recruit, completed an and-one to put the Crusaders up 60-45, the Knights would go on a 21-9 run. Krone nailed two triples, Ogden scored seven points and earned his way to charity stripe seven times and made five of his free throws. Barney and Jonah Wilson also chipped in during the fourth quarter comeback.
After Williams connected on a three-pointer that bounced off the rim, hit the top of the backboard, and rattled in, the Crusaders answered seconds later with a baseline triple by White that would give them a 72-66 lead. Metro-East Lutheran would not get back to within one possession for the remainder of regulation.
The Knights have plenty of talent and height, especially for a Class 1A school and come playoff time they figure to be a tough out for anyone. However, at the moment, there’s plenty of things that Smith will tell you that they have to work on to get to that next level the Knights aim to reach in the regular season.
“We have a good basketball team, but we have to clean up some small things to be a great basketball team. They worked hard, they played hard, but it’s the small things. Our guard play is good enough that we can put enough pressure on the ball to give ourselves a chance, but early on in the game we had some pocket turnovers that we work on daily,” Smith said. “I knew that [Lutheran North was] going to come out and be aggressive on the ball, and some of them are football players, so they’re rough.”
Not quitting and coming back from a double-digit deficit late on will please a coach, but comebacks always start by letting games get away from you, and that’s what the Knights ultimately took away from last night.
“We did that but, we gotta start it at the beginning. We can’t lollygag and play soft at the beginning and expect a comeback every single time,” Williams said. “We gotta play from start to finish.”
