O'Fallon runs past Railers 54-31; Lincoln finishes 4th in Collinsville Holiday Tournament

 

[December 30, 2023] 

Collinsville – A holiday tournament that began with two games of optimism and hope ended with two games of disappointment and questions as the Railer boys basketball team never led in losing to O’Fallon 54-31, earning Lincoln fourth place in the 2023 Collinsville Prairie Farms Holiday Classic Tournament.

O’Fallon came out on a mission, reeling off the first 9 points of the game while keeping the Railers off the scoreboard for almost the first six minutes of the contest. Frank Sanders scored on a layup to break up the shutout with 2:12 remaining in the first quarter.

Drew Hayes hit a field goal to pull Lincoln to within 5 points at 9-4, but O’Fallon ran off the final 5 points of the stanza to take a 14-4 lead into the second period.

The Railers outscored O’Fallon 8-4 in the second quarter to make the score 18-12 at halftime. The Railers missed all nine 3-pointers they attempted in the half. O’Fallon outrebounded Lincoln 15-6.

All things considered, Lincoln could have been in a much worse position than just down 6 points at the half. Unfortunately, the Railers would get a taste of that in a second half that belonged to O’Fallon.

Trey Schilling hit a 3-pointer for the first points of the second half to pull Lincoln to within 3 points at 18-15 That was the closest Lincoln would get for the rest of the game, as O’Fallon scored the next 6 points to build a 24-15 lead. The Panthers outscored Lincoln 22-10 in the quarter, including the final 8 points of the period to give O’Fallon a 40-22 lead heading into the final stanza.
 

O’Fallon picked up where it left off in the quarter, outscoring Lincoln 12-1 in the first four-plus minutes and coasted to a 54-31 win.

The manner in which the Railers lost to O’Fallon, in addition to Lincoln’s 67-41 loss to Collinsville the previous night, did not sit well with LCHS head coach Neil Alexander.

“We got beat; tonight, it was a better basketball team that beat us,” he said. “But more so than anything, I’m upset with our effort, how hard we competed and how we executed.

“Some of the best games I’ve ever been involved with, we didn’t come out on the good end, but by God, we played hard and we competed and we executed and did everything that we needed to do to at least give us a chance to win. I don’t know where our defense has gone for the last two nights, but it was non-existent. They [O’Fallon] shot layup after layup, and we had no fight.”

The numbers illustrate Alexander’s point, as O’Fallon outscored Lincoln on fast break points 20-0. With most of the fast breaks resulting in layups for the Panthers, O’Fallon also outscored the Railers in the paint 34-16.

“I want to fight,” Alexander said. “I want to compete. We’re not going to win every game, and we might have competed and not won. That’s what I’ve always tried to teach our kids: regardless of the outcome of the game, you do the best you can, you play hard to your potential, and let it lay. I don’t think we’ve done that the last couple games.

“We didn’t fight, the structure of our defense wasn’t there, and not all five guys were playing together.”
Hayes led Lincoln with 9 points, Aidan Gowin added 6 and Schilling scored 5 for the Railers, who dropped to 10-5 with the loss.

Coach Neil Alexander

O’Fallon was led by Jaeden Rush with 13 points. All-tournament selection Rini Harris scored 12 and Will Brown, Jr. added 10.

Following Thursday night’s loss to Collinsville, Alexander noted that the schedule structure of the Collinsville tournament could impact the performance of scrappy, hustling, pressing teams like the Railers as opposed to slower, methodical, halfcourt-offense oriented teams.

“The setup of the tournament is that we played two hours ago,” he said following his team’s loss in the 7:30 contest Thursday following an earlier 2:30 game. “And the way we play, when you turn around and play a ranked team, it’s kind of hard. I would rather see your semifinal game be your first game of the day to get to the championship game instead of play a game to get to the semis, and now we’ve got to play two games.”

“It's not my tournament. We’ll play in it; we love it. That’s the only negative thing I have to say about it, because we get good competition. We get to play people we don’t play throughout the year.”

But the overarching issue concerning Coach Alexander was his desire for the Railers to play with a focused, intense, scrappy, never-give-up mindset that Lincoln basketball is known for from the opening tipoff through the final buzzer.

“Times have changed,” he said. “[Years ago] there would’ve been backlash from other players—not just coaches—on our performance. Nowadays, it’s everybody looking for themselves. We’ve got to get something going in the right direction, because the teams that we beat in this tournament, I think both of them went 1-and-3.

“We’ve got to figure it out. Win or lose, we’ve got to play like Railers and play our tails off. Then, whatever happens, it happens.”

Alexander noted that the January schedule will be a make-or-break stretch to determine the Railers’ fortunes this season.

“We’ve got Quincy, Rock Island and Chatham,” he said. “We’ve got to play Jacksonville again. We’ve got play at Normal U-High. All of those are not very easy basketball games.”

Members of the 2023 all-tournament team included: Jamorie Wysinger (MVP), DeCarl Payne, Nick Horras and Zach Chambers, Collinsville; Stevie Tatum, Decatur MacArthur; Mario Brown, Granite City; Rini Harris, O'Fallon; Bradley Longcor III, Camden Brown and Dom Clay, Quincy; and Drew Winslow, Triad.

Lincoln’s next game is a January 5 contest starting at 7 PM at Chatham Glenwood.

[Loyd Kirby]