12-30-13
BY SETH WHITEHEAD
FOR A BASELINE VIEW
VANDALIA – St. Anthony’s task Monday in the championship of the 42nd Annual Vandalia Holiday Tournament was a formidable one.

The Bulldogs were charged with finding a way to slow down a Flora team that steamrolled through Pool A of the tournament by an average margin of 23 points-per-game.

But first-year St. Anthony coach Cody Rincker felt his team would have a chance to pull off the feat if it could do two things: attack the Wolves’ zone defense and keep Bryce Pearce and Ethan Leib out of the zone on offense.

Easier said than done, but that’s exactly what the third-seeded Bulldogs were able to do, knocking off the top-seeded Wolves 55-48 for the title a year after finishing ninth in their first trip to Vandalia.

“That was just tremendous focus by our guys and execution of the game plan,” Rincker said.

Tournament-MVP Alex Hoelscher (16 points, 13 rebounds) and all-tournament selections John Goeckner (20 points, seven rebounds) and Neil Williams (15 points) led the way for the Bulldogs statistically, but their contributions went far deeper than those impressive numbers.

Williams guarded Flora sharpshooter Bryce Pearce most of the night and helped hold him to 17 points on 5-for-19 shooting. Pearce came into the game averaging 25.5 ppg in the tournament, including 49 percent shooting from three-point range and 54 percent shooting from the floor overall.

“That was the key, to kind of keep him and keep him from getting 30 or 40 like he’s capable of,” Rincker said. “We knew if we did that, we’d have a decent shot at winning tonight.”

Matt Gibson started the game guarding Pearce, but Rincker switched the athletic Williams onto Flora’s top scorer early in the first half and it proved to be a wise decision.

“He was a man on a mission and accepted the challenge,” Rincker said.

Hoelscher and Goeckner’s aggressiveness offensively inside helped get Leib into some serious foul trouble early on. The Wolves’ second-leading scorer and top rebounder had three fouls just two minutes into the game and sat out most of the first half.

Leib still managed to score 12 points by the time the final buzzer sounded, but Flora coach Phil Leib feels the game might have gone much differently had he not been saddled with those early fouls.

“I think that’s what really hurt us and shot us in the foot,” coach Leib said. “He’s got to sit and watch for the next quarter and a half. What people don’t understand is that puts so much more pressure on Bryce, and we’re so much more one dimensional.”

The Wolves managed to maintain for a while without Leib, even holding an early 17-10 lead after a 7-0 run to start the second quarter.

But Flora went cold soon after, as St. Anthony countered with a 7-0 run of its own that had the Bulldogs leading 23-18 at halftime.

St. Anthony pushed its lead out to nine points early in the third quarter, but three-straight 3-pointers in a two-minute span by Pearce had the game knotted at 34, setting up an exciting final 12 minutes of play.

After the teams traded baskets for about four minutes, St. Anthony gave itself a little breathing room with a Hoelscher bucket and a Williams steal and fast-break score to put the Bulldogs up 44-40.

Pearce drew Flora back to within two by hitting 2 of 3 free throws after getting fouled by Williams on a three-point attempt, but Williams came right back with a big 3-pointer for St. Anthony just past the four-minute mark.

Williams came up big again following a John Casolari bucket, finding Hoelscher for a wide open layup after a Bulldogs timeout to put St. Anthony up 49-44 heading into the final minute.

A pair of Leib baskets and three missed free throws by St. Anthony — the final two by Hoelscher — made things very interesting in the final seconds.

But Pearce missed a 3-pointer that would have tied the game with 13 seconds remaining, and Hoelscher got redemption by sealing the game with a pair of free throws with 10.7 seconds to go.

“We talk all the time about turning the page, turning the page, and that’s what he did,” said Rincker of Hoelscher sinking the free throws after barely grazing the rim on his final attempt on his previous visit to the foul line.

Pearce’s final three-point look was a good one, but the shot was well off the mark.

“For Pearce to get that type of look and miss it was fortunate on our part,” Rincker said. “But we had a hand in his face and made him work. I hope a little bit of that was our defense working all night long making him work so hard that he didn’t quite have the legs.”

The Bulldogs made a conscious effort to drive aggressively toward the basket all night, with Goeckner proving partcularly effective. Flora big man Pedro Mendoza was also in foul trouble and fouled out in the fourth.

“We really wanted to attack that zone,” Hoelscher said. “We wanted to push it in the post and get some early fouls on their good rebounders so we’d have it easy on the boards. It really worked out.”

Coach Leib would have liked to have seen his team do the same, but it settled for jumpers most of the night, especially when Ethan Leib was on the bench with foul trouble.

“That’s where we’ve got to find a little more toughness about us,” said coach Leib, whose team fell to 7-4. “We’ve got to set screens rather than just one pass and a shot.”

St. Anthony is now 10-3 just a year after setting the program record with 19 losses.

“I couldn’t have asked for a much better start,” Rincker said. “And again, I’ve got to tip my hat to my boys. They’ve listened and they’ve responded and they’ve been coach-able.”

Defense has been a key to the turnaround, as the Bulldogs held a Flora team that averaged 72 p.p.g. in the tournament heading into the title game under 50 points.

“We try to get after it the whole time,” Hoelscher said. “That’s because we’re not that strong offensively. That’s where we really hold our heads up, is our defense.”

Hoelscher averaged a double-double (11.4 ppg, 11.8 rpg) for a team that is already just one win from equaling last year’s victory total.

“We really have gotten it in our heads after last year that we need to go 100 percent each game, even above that,” Hoelscher said. “Last year I can’t even say that we hustled the whole time. We really took that season for granted and this year we’re getting after it and doing everything we can to get wins and have a good year.”