Photo by Eric Stauffer
Photo by Eric Stauffer
Photo by Eric Stauffer
Photo by Eric Stauffer
Photo by Eric Stauffer
ALTON – There's always a big crowd at Marquette Catholic boys' basketball games.
Even when it's on Pack the Place Pink Night, like the one on Friday against the East Alton-Wood River Oilers.
“Whether it's Pack the Place or not Pack the Place, this gym is like this every Friday night when we have home games,” Marquette coach Steve Medford said. “It's a neat place and it's a neat atmosphere. Every opposing coach who has come to this gym always complimented the student section and how much fun it is to play in this situation. It's a fun gym.”
The large fan support certainly helped the Explorers on Friday. Marquette stormed to an 11-0 lead en route to a 67-28 win over EA-WR to clinch the Prairie State Conference championship.
The Explorers, ranked fifth in the Class 2A state poll, won their 13th straight game, improved to 21-2 overall and ended their conference season at 5-0.
“Marquettte is a good team and well coached,” EA-WR coach Kyle Duncan said. “They're a hard team to beat, especially at their own place. They're really tough. The people on the bench help out a lot. They're a tough team to match up with, especially what we were doing tonight. But it is what it is.”
The Oilers lost their seventh straight game and dropped to 4-15. Their game with Marquette on Friday was their conference opener.
“I know Wood River hasn't had a great year this year, but they tried hard and their kids came out and tried to be aggressive and they did some things pretty good,” Medford said.
EA-WR will play another conference game at 7:15 p.m. Saturday at Nokomis. It will play Mount Olive on Feb. 7, Bunker Hill on Feb. 10 and Metro East Lutheran on Feb. 14.
The Oilers have seven regular season games remaining. They haven't won a game since Jan. 3.
“We have a pretty tough schedule the rest of the way, but I think we have some winnable games on there and I think we can just keep going into the right direction from there,” Duncan said.
The Explorers haven't lost a game since Dec. 21. They won a pair of tournaments during their 13-game winning streak.
“It's a good team,” Medford said. “We have a lot of depth and a lot of kids from 1 through 7 who can play. It's a very balanced team, so if you've got balance like that from your guard play to your big play, it's tough to guard. In the past couple of years, we haven't had much depth.”
Marquette will look to extend its winning streak at 7 p.m. Saturday against Mount Carmel in the Pinckneyville Shootout. The Alton school has six regular season games remaining, four of them are at home.
The Explorers improved to 4-0 in home games. They played their second Friday night home game of the season.
Marquette had its Pack the Place Pink night for the third straight year. The event was sponsored by OSF Saint Anthony's Health Center and it allows fans from both Marquette and EA-WR to pack the gymnasium as part of breast cancer research. Most of them wore pink T-shirts.
Marquette even added an extra student section at the stage area behind one of the baskets after the bleachers were getting full.
“Our student section is amazing,” Medford said. “They did a heck of a job.”
The Explorers had three players in double figures. Sammy Green finished with 19 points with three 3-pointers, Reagan Snider scored 13 points and Nick Hemann added 10 points and six rebounds off the bench. A total of 10 Marquette players scored.
The Oilers struggled offensively for most of the game, missing their first 22 shots before Justin Englar scored the team's first field goal with a minute into the third quarter. He finished with a team-high eight points.
Also for EA-WR, Jake Roustio finsihed with five points and Jamie Roustio had six rebounds.
“This was probably one of the worst shooting nights I have ever been a part of,” Duncan said. “We got to work through some things. We've got other issues going on internally. It was a rough night for us, but we'll bounce back.”
Marquette led 15-4 after the first quarter and 33-4 at halftime. Green scored 11 of his points in the first half.
The Explorers forced the Oilers to make 15 percent (8 for 53) of their shots and commit 14 turnovers.
“We kind of built the program just on defense and obviously, we defended pretty well,” Medford said. “Offensively, we executed pretty well and we got some easy baskets and jumping out to a good lead was the key and we did that. I thought our kids played hard and we always play hard.”
The Explorers began their conference season on Dec. 2 with a 49-41 win over Nokomis. They beat Metro East Lutheran 64-48 on Dec. 6, Mount Olive 61-28 on Jan. 3 and Bunker Hill 63-38 on Jan. 10.
MARQUETTE 67, EA-WR 28
Oilers 4 0 6 18 – 28
Explorers 15 18 21 13 – 67
EA-WR – Jake Roustio 5, Justin Englar 8, Zach Wells 2, Christian Hunter 2, Zach Womack 2, Joel Biesk 4, Shawn McKee 5. 2FG-7 3FG-2 FT-8
Marquette – Kyle Buecker 2, Bryce Pettiford 5, Sammy Green 19, Chris Hartrich 4, Jeremy Strebel 2, Ryan Ely 5, Reagan Snider 13, Nick Hemann 10, Jake Hall 4, Brady McAfee 3. 2FG-18 3FG-5 FT-16.