 02/24/2025
BY JACK BULLOCK
CARBONDALE - Here are a few random notes heading into the first
round of the playoffs, a.k.a the regionals.
Belleville
Althoff suffered what ABV considers an embarrassing loss at
home to 1A Edwardsville Metro-East Lutheran on Friday night.
The Knights
took advantage of what reports say was a “lackluster”
effort from the Crusaders in the regular season finale.
Still,
MEL took down the state's top-ranked 2A club and they could
be a factor in the 1A Jacksonville Super-sectional as they are
part of the Raymond-Lincolnwood Regional.
The same
Knights played a matinee the next day at Nashville where the
Hornets won 56-43.
The IHSA
wasn't very kind to the Hornets and the rest of the Carlyle
Regional as six of the top eight teams seeded in the sub-sectional
are in one regional.
I know
that the premise of the setup is to separate the top four teams
and use geography to put the rest together.
However
this alignment means that top-seeded Belleville Althoff and
fourth-seeded Pinckneyville should romp to semifinal wins and
and championship matchup while the Carlyle Regional could be
a bloodbath in a basketball sense with six teams all capable
of making a run.
The Carlyle
Regional features five 20-win teams and Trenton Wesclin has
18.
The Chester
Regional has two.
In 2019-20
the Breese Central, Breese Mater Dei and Carlyle were shifted
north to a different sectional and Breese Mater Dei rolled past
Teutopolis, Alton Marquette and Murphysboro, beating the Red
Devils to win the Carbondale Super-sectional.
If it
is all about geography, then why did they suddenly end up coming
back south?
Another
topic that needs to be addressed is the criteria for hosting
postseason regionals and sectionals.
Some
of the choices to host over the past few years make my brain
hurt.
Sectionals,
with regionals to a lesser extent, need to be held in the larger,
most convenient, sites.
Anyone
who have been in these facilities will understand what I'm talking
about.
In this
era of basketball, no fan should be turned away because the
venue chosen was too small to handle the crowd.
Meanwhile
there were conference championships awarded last week with Pinckneyville
taking care of business by beating Benton on Friday finish 27-3
overall, 9-1 in the SIRR Mississippi.
Herrin
split two games this season with Murphysboro and ended up with
a better mark in the SIRR Ohio, finishing 7-1 and 23-7 with
the Red Devils losing to Carterville on Friday night at home.
Breese
Central went unbeaten again this season in clinching their fifth-consecutive
Cahokia Conference Mississippi Division title, going 10-0 in
the league, 25-5 overall.
Carlyle
won the Illinois Division of the Cahokia, finishing up 9-1,
26-5.
The small
school division of the Cahokia (Kaskaskia) was a tie between
Steeleville and New Athens with each ended up 9-1.
Fairfield
outlasted Hamilton County to take possession of the Black Diamond
Conference East Division.
The Mules
won it with a 9-1 mark, 18-12 overall.
(CONTINUED) |
State-ranked
1A power Goreville “ran the table” with a 12-0,
28-3 mark to take the top prize of the West Division of the
Diamond.