Gibault Hawks riding hot streak; East and West ready to battle again

The six-game winning streak by the Gibault Hawks, which includes a 48-42 upset victory Saturday over Okawville in the championship of the Okawville Invitational, was sparked in large part by a tough home defeat.

Gibault couldn’t hold a 13-point, second-half lead at home Jan. 6 against Mater Dei and lost 42-40 to the Knights in overtime.

The Hawks followed that with an emotional 55-53 win over Civic Memorial and recently finished off a 4-0 run at the Okawville Invitational by beating a Rockets team that is ranked second in Class 1A.

“It really started with that Mater Dei game,” said Trevor Davis, the Gibault scoring leader and senior forward. “We went into the fourth quarter with a lead and we couldn’t hold on. The last couple weeks in practice we’ve really focused on defense and finishing games. We’re starting to see the benefits.

“I think we’re just playing with more confidence and trusting each other. Against Okawville we just came out loose, knowing we had nothing to lose. We were playing on their floor just wanting to play hard.”

Now 14-6, the Hawks are feeling a bit better about themselves and were ranked second in the new BND Small-School Poll. With five more wins, they will get Hall of Fame coach Dennis Rueter his 700th career victory. Rueter’s teams are 695-360 in 37 seasons.

That would make Rueter the third-winningest coach in metro-east boys basketball history behind former Collinsville coach Vergil Fletcher and Okawville coach Dave Luechtefeld, according to Illinois High School Association records.

Fletcher ranks fifth all-time in Illinois with 792 wins at Collinsville, Mt. Pulaski and Pana. Luechtefeld, 12th on the all-time wins list with 738, got them all at Okawville. Legendary Westchester St. Joseph coach Gene Pingatore, closing in on 1,000 career wins, is the Illinois record holder.

Gibault has a high-profile scorer and rebounder in the 6-foot-4 Davis (18.3 points, 9.5 rebounds per game with 25 blocked shots, and a secondary scorer in 6-5 senior Collin Kessler (12.7 points, 6.8 rebounds per game).

Three other players average between 6-8 points per game in Ryan Gool (7.7 ppg), Karson Huels (7.2 ppg) and Garrett Rueter (6.9 ppg).

“We’ve still got to get tougher,” Dennis Rueter said. “We’ve got to learn how to close a game out. In the past when you got behind us you were going to have to catch us, because we weren’t going to give you anything.

“Our kids are pretty competitive and they definitely want to be successful, but the attention to detail on defense has helped us.”

Davis and the Hawks are well aware of the importance Coach Rueter places on playing solid defense. It’s been a hallmark of his teams for decades.

“He’s always on us about it,” Davis said. “He knows that we have really good shooters and we can get the ball into the post well. He knows we can score, but he knows we need to work on that defense. I just don’t think we were focusing that hard on the defensive side of the ball before and that’s really picked up.

“It’s getting close to our last month of high school basketball and we really don’t want to waste it. Every game counts.”

With traditional metro-east 2A heavywweights Central and Mater Dei now in 3A along with Columbia and Freeburg, the Hawks feel they have a shot at another deep playoff run in 2A.

Gibault reached the Class 1A Jacksonville Super-Sectional last season before losing 41-37 to Liberty.

“Everybody’s like OK, pretty good, but nobody’s standing out,” Rueter said. “We’ve got a pretty diverse schedule and I think that helps us.”

Davis has drawn recruiting interest in basketball, baseball and soccer. He would like to play both basketball and baseball in college and several schools have expressed interest in letting him try it if he is so inclined.

“I think he’s going to wait it out and see what his best option is,” Rueter said. “I think he’d love to play both, but in college that might be tough to do.”

Missouri-St. Louis and Rockhurst are two Division II schools that have spoken with Davis about basketball along with Division III DePauw. Some junior colleges are also in the mix, according to Davis.

“It’s been such a hard decision for me,” Davis said.

What’s not hard for Coach Rueter is finding ways to get more out of his teams. The Belleville East graduate been doing that successfully since taking the job in 1980.

“When you’re not having success, you’ve got to be selective about how critical you are because the kids have their heads down,” he said. “When you’re winning, everybody’s coming in with a smile on their face and that makes my job easier.

“I can be brutally honest at times — and that’s when I’m at my best is when I’m brutally honest. There’s no reason for us to start thinking we’re real good here yet.”

History repeats itself

After Althoff senior Jordan Goodwin and Chaminade junior Jericole Hellems staged an awe-inspiring scoring battle Saturday night at the Belleville East Chick-fil-A Classic, it brought to mind another one-on-one battle from years ago.

Hellems broke the Belleville East tournament scoring record with 47 points in Chaminade’s 97-94 victory over Althoff in the championship game, while Goodwin poured in 42 points and grabbed 18 rebounds. Goodwin is headed to Saint Louis University.

Back in January of 1990, two of the state’s top recruits went head-to-head as Wesclin star and University of Iowa recruit Paul Lusk took on Springfield Calvary and Illinois-bound Rennie Clemons at the Highland Shootout.

The game was an instant classic as Lusk scored 37 points and Clemons had 42 in Wesclin’s 94-88 overtime victory before a standing-room-only crowd of more than 3,000 at Highland.

Lusk — now in his sixth season as the head basketball coach at Missouri State — spent one season at Iowa, where he suffered a leg fracture. Lusk finished his career at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he helped the Salukis to three straight NCAA Tournament appearances.

East-West III, the sequel

Belleville East (11-7) is just 2-4 in Southwestern Conference play, but has beaten city and conference rival Belleville West (10-6, 4-2) twice this season.

East won a 58-57 thriller on Dec. 13 at West in a conference game attended by University of Illinois coach John Groce. The Lancers beat the Maroons again Saturday, winning 80-74 in a non-conference clash in the third place of the Chick-fil-A Classic at Belleville East.

The teams will battle again for the second time in three days in a 7:30 p.m. clash on Tuesday at Belleville East and could conceivably square off again in the Class 4A regional playoffs.

Court gets a grip

The Southwestern Conference basketball game between the Belleville East Lancers and Granite City Warriors that was stopped because of hazardous floor conditions will be continued on Feb. 8.

East is leading the game 18-7 at the end of the first quarter. The game will pick up from that point back at Granite City.

Granite City High School had put a new urethane finish on its basketball court over the Thanksgiving break, but repeated use of a mismatched cleaning solution made the surface too slick and unplayable.

The Warriors discovered the problem Jan. 12 when they played host to the Lancers . Officials suspended the game out of concern for the players’ safety after watching both sides slip and slide through the first quarter.

Ironically, the game had been rescheduled from the following day because of a forecast winter storm and the threat of icy roads.

“It was the cleaning solution we were using on the floor,” Granite City Athletic Director John Moad said . “Every time we used our scrubber, we made it worse.”

But the company that provided the finish for the floor used the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to reseal the court and correct the issue. A freshman boys basketball tournament and girls varsity game has since been played on it without any problems.

Moad said the floor will be stripped and resurfaced again at year’s end.

“The floor is performing well and will get us through this season,” he said.

(BND Sports Editor Todd Eschman supplied some information for this story).

This story was originally published January 23, 2017 at 9:34 PM with the headline "Gibault Hawks riding hot streak; East and West ready to battle again."