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COLLINSVILLE – During the past two weeks, the coaches on the Edwardsville boys basketball team have adopted a new style that emphasizes getting shots off faster in order to maximize scoring chances.
In the first round of the 35th Prairie Farms Collinsville Holiday Tournament on Thursday morning, the new style worked as Malik Robinson led the way with 20 points and Brennan Weller added 15 as the Tigers held off a late challenge to defeat Quincy 59-56.
“Yeah, we’ve made some changes,” a smiling Tiger coach Dustin Battas said in his postgame interview. “I think as a coach, you have to figure out a way that suits your players. You know, for a while, I think maybe we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with a couple of our guys. And we’ve struggled to score baskets. I thought our defense has always been good, but even if you hold teams to 40, you’re not going to win a whole lot of games. So we decided over Christmas break to play a new way, and have some guys that weren’t playing before that could really make baskets. And maybe we were having trouble playing the way we wanted to with our Princeton offense. So we’ve tried to kind of find a way to blend the two, and still have good possessions, but play a little faster, get guys open in some space, and really try to maximize our guys' skills, because, like I said, if you don’t score 40, 50, 60 points, you’re rarely going to have an opportunity to win. So, we’ve definitely revamped our offense.”
And making such a change in the middle of a season is often very difficult, at best. Battas is very confident that his players could make the adjustments quickly and adapt to a new style.
“It is hard to change,” Battas said. “I knew to play defense like we’ve been playing, and we know that our guys are very smart. And they’re very intelligent with basketball IQ, and being with coach (Mike) Waldo, to me, it didn’t seem like a big deal, because he was always evaluating and changing the way we were playing to suit our players. And so, I do credit our guys, but they’re so used to that type of stuff, where we’re just going to tell you how to play, and we’re going to practice it, and practice it, and practice it, and get good at it. So it’s really a compliment to our guys, because we have changed a lot.
“In fact, our practices look night and day different than it did two weeks ago,” Battas continued, “just from the way we want to play, so it’s a credit to our guys, and we have the confidence to change those things, because our guys are really intelligent and really try hard.”
The Blue Devils struck first on an inside basket from Brady Rupert, but the Tigers struck quickly as Robinson and Jaylen Tuggle scored three quick baskets off turnovers to give Edwardsville a 6-2 lead that forced Quincy to call a timeout. Brennan Weller quickly made it 8-2 before Jirehi Brock converted a three-point play to cut the Tiger lead to 8-5 before an exchange of free throws made it 11-7. Edwardsville then went on a 7-4 run the remainder of the period, as Jackson Weller hit a three as part of the run that made the score 18-11 Edwardsville at quarter time.
Quincy quickly cut the lead to one with back-to-back threes from Adonte Crider and Payton Nicholson to cut the Tiger lead to 18-17, but a basket from Weller and Robinson increased the lead right back to 23-17. Those baskets sparked a 21-11 Tiger run for the remainder of the quarter, as Robinson hit a pair of threes during that stretch, with Carson Phillips hitting another three and both Nic Hemken and Weller hitting key baskets along the way, Weller hitting a reverse lay-in right before the buzzer to give Edwardsville a 39-28 halftime lead.
The increase in offensive production was a very simple explanation.
“Our goal was to try to get open shots faster,” Battas said. “We’ve been watching film; we thought a couple of times, we had open shots that our guys were hesitant to take. And eventually what would happen is that guys would get all over it and lose the ball. So our whole thought process was we have to take the first open shot. Let’s do a better job of getting them into those open shots right away, and then build up their confidence and take them. We’ve been making guys run in practice for not shooting, as funny as that sounds, because we do watch film, and I think we had a lot of guys that had scoring opportunities; they’re just too timid. So I really think it’s been a mind shift more than anything, of showing them what we want to do, and then conditioning them to take those shots and be more confident in doing so.”
And Robinson is a big help in the Tigers achieving that goal, as he was able to hit big shots in that first half to keep Edwardsville ahead.
“I think Malik helps,” Battas said. “You asked how we were able to play a couple of different ways. Malik’s a 4.0 (grade point average), 30 (American College Test score), so he’s pretty much like a computer. You can pretty much just tell him what to do, and he had probably his best game today so far. With him and the ball, you want to balance playing fast, but not playing reckless. When Malik has the ball, you know you’re going to be able to do that. So for us, it’s just been what we wanted to do in an attempt to score more baskets.”
The Tigers were able to start the second half with a 41-32 lead as Hemken scored the initial basket, but the Blue Devils hit on a pair of threes from Brock and Lucas Reis to cut the advantage to 43-35, then Brock tipped in his own miss to make it 43-37. Jeremiah Talton hit a pair of free throws to make it 43-39, but the Tigers outscored Quincy 5-2 during the next stretch as Weller accounted for all five points on a basket underneath and a three-point play to make it 48-41 after three.
The start of the fourth quarter saw Quincy come close again, only to be thwarted by key Edwardsville baskets and free throws, especially a three-point play from Robinson that made it 51-43. The Blue Devils kept coming back, however, and went on an 8-1 run, getting a three-point play from Brock, a three from Talton with 3:10 left in regulation and another three from Crider with 2:43 left to tie the game at 52-52. Hemken hit a couple of free throws to give the Tigers the lead back, and a key Robinson bucket off a steal with 1:23 left gave Edwardsville a 56-52 lead. Brock then came right back and dunked to cut it to 56-54 with 1:11 left, and a Tiger free throw made it 57-54. But with 21.9 seconds left after a steal, Robinson was called for an intentional foul, from which Crider hit the free throws with 17.5 seconds left. The Blue Devils got the ball after the intentional foul, but very good Tiger defense forced a jump ball, and forced a bad shot from Reis, which he missed. A pair of Weller free throws with 3.6 second left gave Edwardsville a 59-56 lead, and the Blue Devils had one last chance to force overtime, but a three from Jaeden Smith hit the rim and bounced away at the buzzer, giving the Tigers the win.
The tough Edwardsville defense, which has been a staple of the Tigers, shined through when it was needed most.
“We changed the defense, and that’s the give and the take,” Battas said. “They’re going to have more possessions, so you might not hold them to their season low, which we kind of prided ourselves on, but as a coach, you can’t be so stubborn to not adapt if it’s possible in the game. So we’re going to have more possessions, give up some more points, but I thought we were able to go back to our base defense of taking two or three guys away that we wanted to, follow the scouting report when those possessions are so vital to the game. So we’re pretty proud of our guys for that.”
And the Tigers showed a lot of resiliency in the stretch run, which bodes well for the remainder of the tournament.
“I thought we were really solid down the stretch,” Battas said. “We took care of the ball, made free throws. Malik really had a tough break; we had fouls to give, and he kind of got hung up with the guy and got an intentional foul. And I thought our guys could have panicked, and we just guarded them, got the ball back, they got a jump ball, and we got the ball back, and made our free throws down the stretch. And they had a chance at the end, with fouls to give, guarded them pretty good out of the timeout. So we’re really happy with our guys late game as well.”
The Tigers advance to the quarterfinals Friday morning at 9 a.m. at Fletcher Gym, meeting up with defending tournament champion Springfield Southeast, a 97-47 winner in the opening game over Oakville of South St. Louis County. Battas is enthusiastically ready for the Spartans.
“Springfield Southeast tomorrow,” Battas said with a big smile. “We’ll play another great team. But we’re in the Southwestern Conference, and we play good teams all the time. Collinsville’s one of the best teams in the state, East St. Louis one of the best teams in the state, Belleville West one of the best teams in the state. So here we go!”
Steven Spencer also contributed to this story.
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