East St. Louis dominates in 3rd quarter, rolls past Belleville West in SWC match-up
East St. Louis rolled past Belleville West in a Southwestern Conference game Friday night.
The Flyers led throughout and blew the game open in the third quarter en route to an 81-52 conference victory. East St. Louis is now 7-1, 2-1 in SWC play.
“I knew they were going to come in and fight, but I knew if we stayed the course we would eventually pull off and that is what we did,” coach Mark Chambers said.
The game took place at the gym on the former Belleville West and Lindenwood Belleville campus (which is now called the Southwestern Illinois Justice and Workforce Development Campus”). East St. Louis is playing its home games there while the arena and locker rooms at the high school are being upgraded — until at least February.
East St. Louis senior and Kansas State recruit led the Flyers with 23 points and eight rebounds. Rich had confidence in his play against the Maroons’ defense.
“Once we went in the locker room and coach Chambers talked to us at halftime, all we had to do was execute,” Rich said. “I’m pretty much used to it (box-and-one defense), I just had to do what I have to do.”
Belleville West fell to 4-5 overall, 0-3 in the SWC. The Maroons’ performance early against a talented East St. Louis team impressed coach Alex Schobert.
“I felt like when they had to play against our set team defense, we did a good job and we rebounded well,” Schobert said. “We’re still a young team, but we’re just trying to get them to buy into the process.”
The Flyers started strong through the first three minutes with all their starters scoring one bucket for an 11-2 lead. Belleville West used a 8-5 run to cut into the deficit.
Forward Myles Liddell led the Maroons’ early with tough points in the paint and forward David Marshall Jr.’s 3-pointer helped to cut the deficit by five points, 27-22. The Flyers responded with a 14-5 run to end the quarter led by two fast break dunks by D’Necco Rucker and a trey from Dainen Rucker.
In the third quarter, Rich put on a show with a couple electrifying slams and a 3-pointer to extend the Flyers’ lead to 21 points. East St. Louis never looked back from there.
Along with Rich’s production, Antwan Robinson posted 14 points and Davis Bynum contributed 11 points.
Lidell led West with 21 points and Marshall Jr. added 15 points.
A look ahead
East St. Louis has a game at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 22, against Hamilton Heights, Tennessee, at Caldwell County, Kentucky.
The Maroons are off until Wednesday, Dec. 28, when they open play in the 79th Annual Centralia Holiday Tournament at 6:15 p.m. against Hillwood, Tennessee.
This story was originally published December 17, 2022 at 12:36 AM.