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Tommie Liddell And East St. Louis Impose Their Will Over Edwardsville
Thompson Clark March 13, 2004 Email Questions/Comments To [email protected] Here at Chicago Hoops.com don’t generally like patting ourselves on the back, but sometimes a pat on the back is in order. In an article titled Breaking Down the Springfield Sectional, we stated the game would be determined by which team imposed their will. We also stated that East St Louis could not afford to fall behind Edwardsville, because if they did Edwardsville would run their Princeton-style offense to victory. From the moment this game started Edwardsville attempted to take control of the game by using their vaunted delay game. The East St. Louis Flyers countered this with an aggressive trapping defense. The Flyers gained an early edge by taking an 18-11 lead into the half. Tommie Liddell was the main cog for East St Louis as he scored 7 of his teams 18 points. More importantly for the Flyers their post players did a superb job on Edwardsville’s top player, Nick Arth. The 6’7 lefty would be held to 12 points. Eight of those twelve points came courtesy of the foul line. As is their style, the 2nd half would see the East St Louis Flyers come out even more aggressively. The Flyers would turn up their defensive intensity another notch as they limited Edwardsville to 6 points in the quarter. 5’11 senior guard Gerald Bell would lead the onslaught with 9 points in the quarter, three of which came from an NBA range three-point shot from the right wing. The Flyers would take a 35-17 lead into the 4th quarter. Tommie Liddell seemed to be content to let his teammates shine as he would score 15 points on 3/3 fgs and 8/10 from the charity stripe. This almost proved fatal as the Edwardsville Tigers made a furious comeback in the 4th quarter. The Tigers employed a three quarters trapping defense. There is an old adage that states, “teams that press do not like to be pressed.”, The Flyers would prove this to be true as their guards started to back pedal, and then buckle under the extreme pressure. The Tigers of Edwardsville would pull within 5 points with just under 2 minutes remaining in the game. All was for naught as the Flyers reasserted themselves by making some timely free throws. Final Score 47-40 in favor of East St Louis. The Flyers received another outstanding game from Darian Luster as he scored 9 points, and grabbed 8 rebounds despite re-injuring his ankle in the opening minutes of the game. Next up for the Flyers is a Supersectional match against Carbondale in Edwardsville. Carbondale has reached this stage by knocking off Belleville West 81-72 in the Carbondale Sectional Championship. Carbondale is the only team to defeat Belleville West. |
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