01-22-15
BY JACK BULLOCK
LITCHFIELD - The Metro-East Lutheran Knights, coming off of a loss to Greenville at the Litchfield Invitational Tournament, were not in the best of moods having lost a chance at the tournament title with a 70-53 defeat at the hands of the tournament's top-seed Greenville on Tuesday.

And Coach Anthony Smith's squad took it out on a cold shooting host club on Thursday night in the fifth place bracket of the 48th annual event.

With a stingy defense and a patient, yet effective, offense in the first two quarters the Knights advanced into Saturday's fifth place bracket title game with a convincing 66-34 win.

Holding the host Purple Panthers to just one field goal in the first half, Metro-East Lutheran improved to 13-6 on the season and will hook up with Nokomis on Saturday.

Coach Smith's club held Litchfield to a 1-of-11 performance in the first half to go with forcing six-turnovers as they sprinted out to a 33-10 halftime advantage.

Although they let up some in the third quarter, the contest was never in doubt.

The Knights finished strong on Thursday night with a big fourth quarter for the win.

Junior guard Teddy Fifer, a 5-foot-9 shooting guard, netted 12 of his team-high 18-points in the first half as Metro-East Lutheran never trailed in the match up.

Coach Smith got balanced scoring from three other players who finished with at least 10-points.

Six-foot-five junior Jason Johnson patrolled the paint for MEL, getting 12-points inside while grabbing 11-rebounds for his efforts while Noah Coddington and Conner Wallace each added 10-points.

“We are continuing to develop that “Mr. Hyde” identity and we are learning what our true strengths are on offense and how to be in position on defense,” said Coach Smith. “We're trying to be disciplined on both ends of the floor. We executed well tonight and gave ourselves every opportunity to win. We try to rely on our defense to generate our offense. We are sort of building an airplane while it's in the air. I'm proud of our effort tonight.”

From the opening tap until intermission, the Knights didn't let Litchfield have anything to brag about.

Had it not been for some foul problems in the first two quarters, Metro-East Lutheran would have been further in the lead.

Litchfield made 8-of-10 free throws after missing their first seven shots from the floor.

The Panthers got just one player; 6-foot-1 junior Conner Simmons, in double-figures as he finished with 13-markers.

In fact his bucket with just :12 remaining in the first quarter was the first(and only) tally by the Purple Panthers from the field in the first 16-minutes.

The Knights did a good job in the first and second quarters attacking the Litchfield zone-defense and capitalizing on the Purple Panthers' misfortune.

Coddington found himself open for a couple of early opportunities from the right baseline and this 6-foot-2 sophomore came through with a two big shots.

His second shot, just a few seconds after Fifer hit his first of four 3-pointers, gave MEL an 11-3 lead.

The second quarter was where the Knights pushed the lead up to double-digits and beyond.

An 9-1 spurt to begin the frame forced Coach Drew Logan to call a timeout as the Panthers were struggling.

Johnson started the offensive journey with a score in the paint off of a 'high-low' pass from 6-foot-6 sophomore teammate AJ Risavy.

Sophomore Braden Woolsey added a basket in close and Wallace, a 6-foot-6 senior, canned a 3-pointer from the left corner as all of the Knights had good evenings offensively.

Following a pair of free throws by Litchfield's Ryan Howard, the next avalanche hit for Metro-East.

An 11-0 surge took the air out of the Panthers.

Fifer scored seven of the points on a fast break lay in, an offensive rebound as he grabbed his own missed shot and eventually another trey, this time from the right wing.

When that bomb hit, it was 33-8 Knights with :17 remaining in the half.

Two free throws by Howard closed the second quarter as MEL led by 23-points at the intermission.

“Well we went into halftime and we had only made one shot and I told the kids, even if we had attempted and made 18 shots in the first half, we would only be up three at halftime. I told the kids that we weren't even taking enough shots to win the game, let alone making enough,” said Coach Logan. “One of the things we talked about was that we need to take more shots from the perimeter, rebound the ball better and try and chip away at the lead. And we did that and we got it down to 13.”

Much to the chagrin of head coach Anthony Smith, the Knights came out flat in the second half and the Purple Panthers took advantage with a nice third quarter run.

In fact Litchfield scored more than half of their total points (19) in the third period as they managed to get to within 13-points of the Knights.

Howard opened the frame with a 3-pointer from the right corner, which keyed a brief scoring push.

Another 3-pointer and later an offensive rebound by Simmons got some emotion and energy going for the Panthers.

Another trey, this time from junior David Seabaugh, got Litchfield to within 17 at 40-23.

After a MEL bucket by Johnson, Litchfield scored six-consecutive points with Cooper Scharf and Simmons each scoring during the brief run to cut it to 42-29.

However a 3-pointer by Wallace on yet another nice pass by Fifer, closed the quarter at 45-29.

Coach Smith got his club's attention during the break between quarters and his Knights responded with another big run to end the drama.

Litchfield's Simmons hit a shot from the right corner at the 6:25 mark in the fourth quarter.

It was the only highlight for the Purple clad squad in the final stanza as things got even more difficult.

Metro-East Lutheran forced 11 of the host's 20-turnovers in the final frame with nearly all of them turning into points for the other side.

This fueled a 19-1 run that closed the contest.

Fifer added another long range shot and senior Kobe Krone picked up two consecutive steals that turned into fast-break lay ins.

Johnson also scored twice, on a repetitive offensive rebound effort (grabbing two straight misses of his own) which finally produced points.

Coddington opened the run with a shot from his spot in the right corner and then added another bucket from the same area of the court.

Even when Coach Smith went to his reserves he got production late when Daniel Shimkus scored on a spin move in the lane to close the scoring with :20 left.

The statistics weren't any better than the outcome for Litchfield as the Panthers hit just 9-of-31 shots from the floor to go with those turnover problems.

They also didn't rebound well, getting just six total offensive rebounds (one in the first half) while being out-rebounded 26-23.

Howard and Scharf followed Simmons in scoring with nine and seven points respectively.

The Knights ended up 28-of-55 overall from the floor (50.9 percent) and hit 6-of-12 from the arc with Fifer hitting four of them.

Coach Smith and his club can pick up fifth place honors with a win over Nokomis on Saturday night.

The Redskins rallied for a win over East Alton-Wood River in the other fifth place bracket semifinal.

Litchfield will face EA-WR, also on Saturday afternoon.

“We got going and made some shots but then it flipped on us. We started turning it over (in the fourth quarter) and they started making shots again,” said Coach Logan. “And rebounding has always been an Achilles heel for us. We have a tendency to watch the ball, kind of like a magnet. Our eyes follow it but our bodies don't. We are small and we need everybody in there rebounding.”

Nokomis (10-9 overall) received 15-points from Andrew Herpstreith in the win while Reid Detmers added 12.

The Redskins also had points from Marcus Chausse (11) and Brayden Sabol (10) in the victory.

EA-WR was led by Blake Marks with 19-points with 16-points coming from Mike Stimac.