Columbia beefing up schedule to compete in 3A; Okawville wins tourney

Once he realized that Columbia’s Class 3A playoff status was a yearly reality, Eagles basketball coach Mark Sandstrom did what he could to help his team find more competition.

As a result, Columbia will face Peoria Richwoods at the Bank of O’Fallon Shootout this season, has added Miller Career Academy of St. Louis and will be competing against stronger 3A and 4A competition at the Belleville East Chick-fil-A Classic.

Miller Academy will be at Columbia on Saturday. The Eagles also face all the teams in the highly competitive Cahokia Conference-Mississippi Division twice, including Central and Wesclin, and play 1A power Okawville.

“That’s only going to pay dividends for us when it comes to the end of the year,” said Sandstrom, whose team is 3-0 and knocked off Class 2A third-ranked Nashville on Saturday to win the Lebanon-Wesclin Thanksgiving Tournament. “We think at the end of the year that we have a legitimate chance to advance a little ways. We’re hosting a regional, but we’re kind of like a mid-major (college), where is you have one bad loss or two bad losses it’s going to hurt you when ti comes to the seeds.”

Columbia returned all five starters and even more experienced players from an 18-11 team that lost to Cahokia in the Mascoutah Regional last season.

Sandstrom likes this team for a lot of reasons. One of them is the high number of gym rats who find ways to stay involved with the game nearly year-round.

“I don’t know how much kids get out and play in the driveway any more,” Sandstrom said. “Right now I’ve got a really good group that does that all the time. I’d say that for six of our top eight, basketball is their No. 1 sport. The experience factor is huge because at the end of the game or the end of the quarter, these kids know exactly what they need to do.”

Four of the Eagles’ five starters are averaging 8.3 points or higher led by 6-foot-7 senior Korbin Farmer (14.7 points and 7.3 rebounds per game), senior guard Jonathan Holmes (14.7 ppg, eight 3-pointers), sophomore guard Jordan Holmes (13.3 points, five assists per game), senior Ryan Gudeman (9.3 ppg).

Drew Huebner, a 6-4 senior forward, averages 8.3 points and six rebounds and former starter Cameron Roth is also back after dealing with an ACL injury.

“This is probably as experienced a team as I’ve had and probably the most versatile team that I’ve had,” said Sandstrom, who entered his 11th season at Columbia with a 177-126 record. “We can play small, we play with two bigs on the floor, we can play slow if we have to. The other night against Nashville, we spread it out on them.”

They also drilled 3-pointers and put the game away early. Jonathan Holmes led the way with 20 points and sank four of five 3-point tries and the Eagles were 8-for-10 from beyond the arc.

Jordan Holmes added 14 points, with Gudeman at 13 points and Farmer at 12.

The Eagles led 21-12 after one quarter and stretch ed it to 41-25 by halftime.

“I told the kisd that we wanted to dictate the game,” Sandstrom said. “We wanted to make sure that Nashville played the way that we wanted to play. If you let Nashville slow it down and get into their stuff and throw it into (6-6 Royce) Newman, they’re really good.

“That’s the last thing that we wanted to do;”

Eight of Columbia’s 11 losses last season were by five points or fewer. Sandstrom said sub-standard free-throw shooting was an issue in many of those games, so he made sure his team got lots of foul line experience in over the summer and preseason.

Jordan Holmes apparently took advantage since he’s missed only two of 16 foul shots this season.

Okawville wins tourney title

Okawville moved to 4-0 and wrapped up the Carlyle Kaskaskian Classic tournament championship Friday with a 52-44 victory over Woodlawn. Junior scoring leader Noah Frederking led the way with 24 points and hit four 3-pointers. Ranked second in Class 1A, the Rockets crushed Flora 67-44 and defeated Carlyle 64-56. Frederking had 25 points in the Carlyle win while Shane Ganz delivered 18, including four 3-pointers.

Frederking is averaging 21 points and Ganz is averaging 12.

Mater Dei rebuilding a bit

Mater Dei is looking for scoring sources after the loss of four starters from a 23-12 12 that finished fourth at the Class 2A state tournament. The Knights move up to the Class 3A playoffs this season, meaning a higer competitive level and a premium on finding consistent on the offensive and defensive ends of the fourth.

After opening the season with a 90-26 blowout win Friday over Gillespie, the Knights were rocked by 3A top-ranked Althoff 79-60 on Saturday.

Mater Dei coach Ron Schadegg saw positives on both nights, most notably the career-high 23 points by Nick Pollmann against Althoff. Pollmann averaged 3.5 points last season as as junior coming off the bench for the Knights.

“That’s something positive we can take away from this and hopefully he can maintain this and carry it over for the rest of this season,” Schadegg said of Pollmann’s big night. “He did a really good job.”

Senior point guard Butchie Timmermann returns along with a trio of 6-6 seniors Jordan Kampwerth, Blake Langenhorst and Joseph Heimann. Sophomore Lucas Theising figures to add scoring punch as well along with senior Garrett Boeckmann.

“We play hard, we give great effort,” Schadegg said. “Our defense is definitely something we felt was pretty strong coming in (to Saturday), but they exposed us pretty easily. I just hope we can make adjustments and progress and get better by the end of the season.”

Wood River Marks-man

No scorer in the metro-east is any hotter than Wood River’s 6-foot-1 senior guard Blake Marks.

Marks is among the St. Louis area scoring leaders at 23.2 points per game and also averages 4.8 rebounds for the Oilers (2-3). Marks’ shooting percentages are off the charts, including 8-for-14 (57.1 percent) from 3-point range while hitting 27-of-37 shots overall (73 percent).

This story was originally published December 7, 2015 at 2:35 PM with the headline "Columbia beefing up schedule to compete in 3A; Okawville wins tourney."