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OTTAWA – Danville boys basketball coach Ted Houpt put it simply about Edwardsville.
“They're really good; they're as good as advertised, and so is Mark Smith.”
Houpt's remarks about the Tigers came after Smith turned in a 45-point, 13-rebound, four assist performance to lead EHS to a 81-59 win over the Vikings in Friday night's IHSA Class 4A Ottawa Sectional championship game at Ottawa's Kingman Gym, sending Edwardsville to Tuesday night's Class 4A Normal Super-Sectional against Chicago Simeon at Illinois State's Redbird Arena.
Simeon won the South Holland Thornwood Sectional Friday, eliminating Harvey Thornton 69-52 as Marquis Brown had 18 points for Simeon and Talen Tucker added 14 points and 10 assists in the win.
Tipoff for the Edwardsville-Simeon game is 7 p.m., with the winner meeting the DeKalb Super-Sectional winner between Bolingbrook and Naperville North at Northern Illinois' Convocation Center Tuesday night in the Class 4A state semifinals at 7:30 p.m. March 17 at Carver Arena at the Peoria Civic Center; the state championship game is set for 7:30 p.m. March 18.
The Tigers went to 30-1 on the year with the win; Simeon heads into Tuesday's game with a record of 28-3. The Vikings were eliminated at 22-9.
“That's a very good team,” said Tiger coach Mike Waldo of the Vikings. “They're very hard to defend and they played a very good game tonight; I thought our guys did a lot of things well. I thought A.J. (Epenesa) played great early and helped us get to a good start and we never let the lead go; I thought A.J. did a great job for us.
“I thought (Caleb) Strohmeier and Jack (Marinko), defensively, were very good and Oliver (Stephen) was excellent off the ball, as he usually is, and I thought Mark made some good plays for us.”
Edwardsville got out of the gate well, the Vikings taking a very early lead before the Tigers hit their stride and took a lead they wouldn't relinquish, leading 25-13 at quarter time and 39-22 at the long break.
Smith's effort was one point short of the all-time record of 46 points at Kingman Gym, which was built in 1932.
“I thought we did a good job of getting Mark the ball in good places,” Waldo said, “and I thought really passed and handled the ball well to get that done."
“Sometimes there's hype on people and other times, there's reality,” Haupt said. “The reality is they're a great, well-coached team with an unbelievable lead player and some good guys to go with him.”
The Vikings did make some runs to get it close, but could get no closer than seven points down the stretch. “We tried, but we'd put them on the free-throw line; slow the game down, they're making free throws. They're so good; you could make a run, but it's so hard to sustain that for four quarters.”
Stephen had 12 points for the Tigers on 4-for-6 shooting from behind the three-point line with 11 rebounds and three assists; Epenesa had nine points, Marinko six, Strohmeier four, Nathan Kolesa and R.J. Wilson two each and Jackson Best one point.
Kendle Moore led Danville with 13 points, followed by Jerry Reed with 12 points, Julian Pearl with eight, Sean Houpt, Elijah Davis and Adam Fortenberry with six each, Lance Langley with five and Caleb Griffin with three.
