03-06-18
BY JACK BULLOCK
CARBONDALE - As the postseason rolls towards the ultimate goal of the “Final Four” in boy's high school basketball, four teams will hook up on Tuesday night at SIU Arena with a spot to play in Peoria on the line.

The 1A and 2A southern Illinois representatives will be the survivors of the two supersectional games set.

In the 1A game Goreville will be making its first supersectional appearance in boy's basketball as they will take on northern invader Moweaqua Central A&M at 6 pm.

In 2A Pinckneyville will make its first supersectional appearance in 10 seasons when it faces defending Carbondale super champs Mount Carmel at 7:30 pm.

The winner of the 1A contest will advance to Friday's semifinal game at Carver Arena and will play the second game of the day slated for 1 pm against the winner of the Okawville/Peoria Quest Charter game played at the Jacksonville Supersectional.

The winner of the 2A game will play 5:30 pm on Friday evening against the winner of the Chicago Corliss/Winnebago game at the DeKalb Supersectional.

The Mount Carmel Golden Aces are back in the Carbondale Supersectional for the second year in a row after they edged Teutopolis, 48-47, to win the 2A Robinson Sectional title on Friday night.

Coach Tyler Buss has his team sitting at 20-11 heading into the super on Tuesday.

But the real story for the Aces this season has been the absence and then return of 6-foot-7 senior Jackson Marcotte.

The ABV 2016-17 “Player of the Year” from a season ago tore his ACL last spring and it was unsure whether or not he was going to be able to return for his senior season.

But the University of Wyoming football signee got the “green light” to return to the hardwood 10 games ago.

Mt. Carmel is 9-1 in those ten contests with regional wins over Bridgeport Red Hill and Harrisburg followed by victories at the sectional over Effingham St. Anthony and the one-point win over the Wooden Shoes.

But the Aces have other weapons, that is for sure, as they come into this “Elite Eight” contest.

Six-foot-one senior Brayden Stipp was a big part of last season's run to Peoria and he has been one of the team leaders for the Aces this season.

Two juniors; 6-foot-2 Bret Doan and 6-foot-4 Austin Rager, provide scoring punch as well.

These four all average double-figures in scoring for Mount Carmel.

While they play a lot of games in Indiana as a member of the Big Eight Conference in the Hoosier State, Coach Buss' bunch are 14-3 against Illinois teams, including the postseason run.

Out of the four remaining teams, the Pinckneyville Panthers have been the most impressive and by far the most consistent.

Head coach Bob Waggoner has guided his ABV top-ranked club to a 30-3 record so far and are looking to make the storied program's first trip to Peoria since they finished fourth in the 2007-08 season.

The Panthers have just three loses this season (3A Benton, 1A Mounds Meridian, Missouri power Whitfield) while they also ran the table in winning the always difficult Mississippi Division of the Southern Illinois River-to-River Conference.

This team is as deep as the Mississippi as they feature a rotation of multiple players that have been able to wear teams down so far in the 2017-18 campaign.

Two of the veterans on the squad, who have led the way, are in the backcourt for the Panthers.

Six-foot-two senior Grant Jausel and 5-foot-10 J.C. Moll have been the catalysts for the Panthers throughout the season.

Both are double-digit scorers and have hit the big shots for most of the season for the Columbia Blue clad club.

Kyle Luke, a 6-foot-2 senior, 6-foot-6 senior Tanner Spihlmann and 6-foot-1 senior Tyler Rice all contribute in different ways.

Sophomore Dawson Yates, 6-foot-1 guard, is part of the depth off of the bench along with 6-foot-1 sophomore Devin Kitchen.

Others who see minutes include 5-foot-11 senior Hunter Clark and 6-foot-4 senior Dustin Bartnicki.

The Panthers have lopsided wins over Sparta and Waterloo Gibault that won their own 2A regional along with impressive wins over rival Nashville and host Trenton-Wesclin to take home the sectional title.

How impressive has Pinckneyville been in the postseason?

The Panthers have outscored their four opponents 247-139, with 37-points scored by Wesclin being the highest total of the four victims

It has been a great run so far for the Goreville Blackcats and head coach Todd Tripp.

His club put together its best ever postseason run, culminating in their first ever sectional championship.

In fact in the long history of this program the Blackcats' boy's cagers had never reached a sectional championship game, let alone a super.

But behind a strong postseason defensive effort, the Blackcats held high scoring Mounds Meridian well below their average in a 67-60 victory over the Bobcats at Meridian to win the regional title.

They then trailed Webber Township 26-9 at one point in the second quarter of their sectional semifinal before putting on a comeback for a 58-50 victory.

Friday night's 48-44 victory over Black Diamond Conference rival Sesser-Valier was won on the defensive end of the floor as they forced the Red Devils into a 2-of-20 shooting effort from the floor to open the second half as the Blackcats took control after trailing 26-20 at halftime.

Braden Webb has been the “go-to” guy for this program and he responded with a four-year prep career in which he is now the all-time leading scorer at 2,074-points.

That is a 17 p.p.g. average for his career and 18.7 p.p.g. this season.

The 5-foot-11 senior point guard also hands out 3.9 assists a game.

Six-foot-three senior forward Tanner Dunn and 5-foot-10 senior guard Peyton Massey are both right at 10-points a game for the Blackcats.

Cole Tosh, also a 6-foot-3 senior forward, and 6-foot senior guard Morgan Bishop, each add six-points a night to the book.

They won the Sesser-Valier Holiday Tournament in December.

They also have quality wins over Woodlawn, Cobden, 2A Chester and Christopher.

The losses are to some good teams, including 3A Benton, 2A Anna-Jonesboro, 2A Carmi-White County, 2A Chester and 1A Christopher, conference teams that they split with.

After beating Sesser-Valier in the title game of the Red Devils' tournament, they dropped two games to S-V in conference play.

They turned the tables on their rivals in the title game of the 1A Hardin County Sectional to get to the “Elite Eight.”

Moweaqua Central A&M will head south 165 miles to Carbondale for the supersectional.

Head coach Rob Smith is no stranger to the ABV northern area as he was an assistant to former Teutopolis head coach Ken Crawford for several years.

He is in his ninth season as the head coach at the school that was a consolidation of the schools Assumption and Moweaqua (A&M) in 1991-92.

If they were to reach Peoria, their trip would be much shorter (95 miles) to Carver Arena.

The Raiders are on a 10-game winning streak and enter the super at 22-8.

They have postseason wins over Windsor-Stewardson-Strasburg, 62-48, and Mulberry Grove, 88-66, to win the Windsor 1A Regional.

Central A&M hosted the sectional where they beat Dieterich in their opening semifinal, 89-64, before handling sub-sectional top-seed Nokomis, 69-56.

Trailing 17-9 at the end of the first quarter, the Raiders responded against the foul plagued Redskins and pulled away in the second half for their second sectional boy's basketball championship.

The won a sectional in 2007, the final season of two-class basketball before falling to Teutopolis in the Charleston Class A Supersectional.

Ironically, when the Raiders won their last sectional championship, they also topped Nokomis.

Coach Smith can lean on scoring and rebounding leader 6-foot-4 sophomore Conner Heaton, who is one of the top producers in the Decatur Area.

Senior guard 5-foot-10 Jameson Smith is the coaches' son.

Smith put together a great balanced game against Nokomis, scoring nine-points while handing out four assists.

Griffin Andricks led the Raiders to the win over Nokomis with 25-points and 10-rebounds.

He is a 6-foot-5 sophomore who nailed four 3-pointers in the fourth quarter of their sectional title triumph.

Five-foot-eight senior guard Tate Paradee came off of the bench for Central A&M and scored 14-points in the sectional championship game.

A&M plays in the Central Illinois Conference, which has basically former members of the Okaw Valley Conference. They hold a win this year over conference foe 2A Shelbyville, who reached the 2A Vandalia Regional championship game last week.

They also lost a game to Decatur Lutheran back on November 24, 111-104 in double-overtime in one of the highest scoring IHSA games this season.