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BASKETBALL: Murphysboro earns first trip to State

Posted March 09, 2011 10:00 pm

Doug Daniels

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[For the first time in school history, Murphysboro has advanced to the IHSA Class 2A State Finals in Peoria after a 41-34 defeat of last year's Southern Illinois representative at state, Breese Central.

"The community, the school, it's such a blessing, this is one of the happiest days of my life," said an elated Red Devils head coach Dale Murphy after the victory. "It's just been such a ride. We've had some great teams at Murphsyboro and, not to take anything away from any of them, but they couldn't get over the hump. Last year we just got beat by a better team. We knew this year we had a shot."

Murphysboro built an 8-4 advantage in the first quarter and never trailed the rest of the night, leading by as many as eleven points as they claimed the Class 2 Super-Sectional hosted by West Frankfort High School in front of a capacity crowd of 5,001.

"We just couldn't keep them off of the offensive boards and that got us in a little foul trouble," said Cougars' head coach Stan Eagleson. "Then the last two and a half minutes of the game, they just executed better than we did. We got it back within two, and we just didn't' execute very well down the stretch, couldn't get it inside to Brandon (Book)."

The Cougars got off to a 4-0 start, but an 8-0 run by the Red Devils aided an 8-6 lead after the first quarter. Both teams continued to struggle from the floor in the second, and each squad managed only 25% shooting in the opening half as Murphy led 16-10 at the break.

"I know we only had 16 points at halftime, but I don't think we took very many bad shots," said Murphy. "I thought we still just tried to stay in our sets and run our sets."

Breese Central came out with some life in the third, and Brandon Book's three-pointer tied the game at 18-18 with 5:21 remaining in the period.

The Cougars may have been able to do even more damage in the third had they shot better from the free throw line, but missed seven of eight from the charity stripe while allowing Murphysboro to score ten unanswered points. Orlando Jarrett's three with 1:04 left in the period gave the Devils a ten-point lead, and Dylan Craig added another triple from the corner just before the end of the quarter to push Murphy ahead 31-20.

It was the Red Devils' turn to feel the pressure at the free throw line in the fourth quarter, as Murphy missed five straight at the line including a pair of one-and-one opportunities while the Cougars clawed their way back.

Freshman Jacob Timmerman drove to the hoop, drew a foul and sank his layup with 3:50 to play, then added the free throw to bring Central to within four.

Nick Grapperhaus drew Pierre House's fifth foul with 1:18 to go, also a three-point play which cut Murphysboro's lead to 36-34.

The Cougars went cold from there, however, failing to take advantage of Murphysboro's woes at the free throw line. The Devils missed five of their last seven free throws in the final minute, but Breese Central couldn't get a shot to fall on offense.

"I thought we executed good down the stretch there when they had cut it to two and we found Gaston for the backdoor layup, I thought that was beautifully ran," Murphy said. "There's just a lot of turning points. The pressure, we handled it really well. We took care of business at the end there, we executed well, I can't say enough about the group."

"We've had some really tough games, we were down 14 in the first half against Carbondale and came back and beat them. Du Quoin had us down 4 late, we've been down numerous times. At Harrisburg the other night, we were down four with three minutes to go and they've got the ball and our kids just kept coming."

Neither team shot the ball well, a result to be expected with the intensity of the defense being played at both ends of the court. Murphysboro made 14-of-50 (28%) from the field while the Cougars were 10-for-46 (22%). Breese Central shot a dismal 1-for-14 from beyond the three-point arc, Murphy was 3-for-7.

Even more alarming were the free throw statistics, as the Devils connected on 10-of-22 (45%) at the line while Breese Central was 11-for-22 (50%).

"We were lucky to be as close as we were shooting like that," said Eagleson.

Murphysboro won the rebounding battle 27-18, including 10 on the offensive end. Breese forced 9 turnovers by the Devils while committing 7 of their own.

Gaston led all scorers wth 16 points, but shot just 6-for-21 from the field. Craig added 11 points for the Red Devils, House 5, Jarrett 4, Eben Brooks 3 and Jordan Stanton 2. Gaston also had a team-high 10 rebounds.

No Cougars finished in double figures, but Book and Blake Norrenberns each had 9 points. J. Timmerman added 6 points, Grapperhaus 5, Keaton Scheer 3 and Alex Timmerman 2. Book led the way with 10 boards.

"This team hasn't talked about anything since June, all we've talked about is Peoria," Murphy said. "We haven't talked about winning the conference, we didn't want to talk about winning regionals or a sectional, and I know all those things come first, we've talked about going to Peoria and now we've reached our one goal of the season."

Murphysboro will take on Pittsfield this Friday at 8:15 p.m. at Carver Arena in Peoria for the right to play for the state championship on Saturday at 8:15 p.m. against either Rockford (R. Christian) or Chicago (Hales Franciscan). The loser will play for third place at 6:30 p.m. Pittsfield knocked off Teutopolis 43-42 in the Springfield Super-Sectional.

"We're going to have to just keep doing what we've done, I don't know what you change when you're 34-0," Murphy said. "Will we put a couple different wrinkles in there, yeah. But we've got to keep playing defense, keep running our patterns and sets, they've worked for us all year."

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