File photo
File photo
Three area basketball players have qualified for the IHSA Three-Point Showdown this weekend at Carver Arena in Peoria.
They are Marquette Catholic senior Sammy Green and Civic Memorial junior Bryce Zupan in Class 3A and Edwardsville junior Grant Schaefer in Class 4A.
Green and Zupan qualified out of the Centralia Sectional on Friday, while Schaefer advanced out of the Pekin Sectional.
Preliminaries in Class 3A and 4A begin at 5 p.m. Thursday. The finals are scheduled for Friday, with Class 3A set for 12:45 p.m. And Class 4A at 7 p.m.
There will be 32 competitors in the preliminaries in each class. The top four shooters advance to finals.
Herrin's Drew Ringel and Carbondale's Javon Love are the other state qualifiers from the Centralia Sectional. Also advancing out of the Pekin Sectional are Quincy's Jacob Eldridge, Belleville West's Marcellus Romious and Pekin's Max Jones.
Green became the second Marquette player in three years to qualify for the state 3-point shooting tournament. Tim Derrington was the last Marquette player to compete in the contest in '16.
Zupan became the first CM player since Jansen Helmkamp in '13 to advance to state.
Schaefer became the second Edwardsville player in two seasons to qualify for state. Junior Malik Robinson competed last year and came up one 3-pointer short of going to the finals.
All three players helped their respective teams turn in strong seasons. Marquette finished 29-1 after losing to Columbia in the Class 3A Waterloo Regional finals, CM finished 18-11 and Edwardsville was 18-9.