St. John Hornets advance to state
EDITOR'S NOTE: To see a video of St. John cutting down the nets of Veterans Memorial Hall in celebration of its regional title, see the Herald Tribune's Facebook page or website.
The next one's better.
Andrew Schwarting scored 27 points, and St. John used a 16-4 third quarter run to pull away from Pinckneyville No. 204 for a 53-27 victory in Monday's championship game of the SIJHSAA Class S St. Mary's Regional.
For the first time since 2012, the Hornets (22-3) move on to the 16-team SIJHSAA Class S state tournament at Rend Lake College in Ina, where they face Central City at 5 p.m. Saturday in the first round.
Central City defeated Centralia Trinity, 55-37, in last Saturday's Kaskaskia College Regional championship.
"Every halftime we come in to, our motto is 'first three minutes, third quarter,'" said St. John coach Tony James. "We come out and just increase our lead or come back. We haven't been down too many times, but we always want to start the third quarter really, really strong."
Ian Reith added a double-double with 13 points and 12 rebounds for St. John, which led 14-9 after the first quarter and 24-17 at halftime.
Ethen Eggemeyer also chipped in six points, nine rebounds and four assists for the Hornets.
Pinckneyville (13-14) had a chance to cut a little deeper into the Hornets' advantage, but Trey Moll missed two of three free throws with six-tenths of a second left in the first half.
"What scared me was two of our three losses this year were to guard-oriented teams," James said. "I was scared of their dribble penetration and kickout, and they missed threes (Monday) that they hit against Steeleville the other night.
"I thought we defended it fairly well, but they missed the shots too."
As James predicted, the Hornets opened up a 31-19 lead on a three-point play by Schwarting with 4:44 left in the third quarter. Reith extended the advantage to 16, 36-20, on a three-point play of his own with 1:21 left in the frame.
St. John took a 40-21 advantage into the fourth quarter.
"I prepped about a day before," Schwarting said, when asked about his mental preparation for the game knowing what was on the line. "I was already getting pumped up, because, you know, it's a big game."
With a superior height advantage, the Hornets' "Big Three" of Schwarting, Reith and Eggemeyer decidedly won the rebounding battle over the smaller and scrappy Tigers.
Lucas Teel and Brendan Ritter combined for 13 points for Pinckneyville, while Vaden Szczepanski added five.
After the game, the Hornets made the crosstown trip back to their own Veterans Memorial Hall, where team members took turns cutting down one of the nets.
"It's great," Schwarting said on going to state with this year's group. "Knowing that you have this much talent on one team, it's really nice."
As it did during the girls' state tournament, Rend Lake College will be live-streaming all games of the boys tournament. Visit www.rlc.edu/warriors and click the SIJHSAA link to find the games.
"I know Central City's really good," James said. "A couple of losses this year and their losses have been to really good teams.
"We'll have to use our advantage - our size - but, we have to take care of the ball better. I know they like to press and we haven't handled it well at times and we'll work on that this week."
The winner of St. John/Central City would face the winner of Woodlawn/Albers-Damiansville on Feb. 8 at 7:15 p.m.