State-bound Crusaders focused on winning it all

Winning the Illinois Class 3A state basketball championship is no longer a dream for the the Althoff Crusaders.

It’s an expectation.

Westchester St. Joseph tripped up the Crusaders in the title game last year. Althoff was four points shy of winning it all.

Since then, Althoff players have insisted anything shy of the big trophy this year will reflect a season wasted.

“Last year we didn’t get the result we wanted, but we’re going back up to get it done,” said junior guard Edwyn Brown.

Win or lose, the next two games will mark the end of the journey for an Althoff team that brought back all but one player — the starting five included — from its near-miss run last year.

SUPER-SECTIONAL: How Althoff advanced

A LOOK BACK: Revisit last season’s 3A championship game

A LITTLE DEEPER: Junior Edwyn Brown returns in time for state run

In the semifinal game at 2:15 p.m. Friday at Carver Arena in Peoria, the Crusaders (30-2) will face none other than those same St. Joseph Chargers (25-8) who put the dream on hold almost a year ago to the day.

“It’s a rematch. It’s revenge, basically,” said Althoff’s top scorer, Jordan Goodwin. “They beat us last year, so I want to make them feel the same way I felt last year. That’s the approach we’ve got to take.”

It’s exactly the approach St. Joseph’s legendary coach Gene Pingatore is preparing his team to face Friday.

“The only thing I look at is they are going to be really high at coming to get us because we got them last year,” said Pingatore, whose 987 wins are the most ever by an Illinois coach. “They may not know the shooters as well as they did last year, but I don’t think there’s an edge. They are going to be flying high.”

While some coaches might be concerned about the weight such expectation has on young players, Althoff coach Greg Leib says it’s kept the Crusaders focused. In part, he adds, it’s because opponents bring their A-game against Althoff.

Althoff has responded to the pressure by clinging most of the season to the top spot on the Associated Press Illinois 3A rankings. This week, the Crusaders broke the top 20 of MaxPreps Xcellent 25.

“Kids being kids, they came out of there last year fired up and unsatisfied,” he said. “They had a great offseason. With high-school kids, you get another year in and they’re a year stronger and a year better. Teams bring great effort to games against us and our kids love that.”

The winner will advance to the championship game at 2:15 p.m. Saturday. The loser will play for third place at noon.

Lincoln-Way West (21-9) and Peoria Manual (26-4) will face off in the other 3A semifinal, which is set for noon Friday.

Scouting St. Joseph

The team that upended the Crusaders last year is hardly the same squad they’ll face Friday. Pingatore lost all but two of his starters, including Glynn Watson, who has moved on to the University of Nebraska.

Nick Rakocevic, who is entertaining college offers from Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, UCLA and USC, to name a few, is back as the only senior on the team. The 6-foot-11 center gave the Crusaders fits in the championship game last year with 18 points and 11 rebounds and is averaging 19.7 points with 480 rebounds this season.

Lavon Thomas (5 ppg, 35 assists) is the Chargers’ only other returning starter.

“From the get-go, Nick was the leader of the group and tried to bring the kids along as best he could,” Pingatore said. “For 80 percent of the season or more, he was the main scorer, the main rebounder. He did everything.

“If you’re looking at Mr. Basketball in Illinois, you have to give a hard look at Nick because of not just what he’s accomplished on the floor, but what he’s accomplished with this team.”

Pingatore has filled in the roster behind Rakocevic and Thomas with three freshmen, four sophomores, and a few juniors who had never played basketball before. The 78-year-old coach, who mentored the likes of NBA Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas and Demetri McCamey, along with William Gates and Arthur Agee of “Hoop Dreams” fame, somehow got his team off to an 11-0 start.

The Chargers dropped eight of their next 17, including a 65-59 loss to CBC at the Bank of O’Fallon Shootout in February at O’Fallon High. Strength of schedule, though, helped them through the postseason, Pingatore said.

“We had a bunch of young kids coming up and we thought, by the end of the year, we could have a good season,” he said. “I think the thing that helped was that we played the toughest schedule we’ve played in my years at St. Joseph. We didn’t win all those games, but we were in it and competed.”

Sophomore Joffari Brown is the only other St. Joseph player to average in double figures with 10 points per game.

Scouting Althoff

The Crusaders don’t just bring the experience of the the 2015 state tournament to Carver Arena. They also bring a depth of athletic skill and talent the likes of which Pingatore hasn’t previously seen.

“A lot of times you have two or three guys, but they’ve got a whole team of good athletes,” he said. “I was impressed last year with, not just the starters, but the guys they brought off the bench.”

Leib doesn’t like to limit himself to five so-called “starters.” Six players have received significant time in at least 29 of 33 games and five of them average in double figures — Goodwin (18.6 ppg), Tarkus Ferguson (13.6 ppg), Brendon Gooch (13.5 ppg), Marvin Bateman (11.1 ppg) and C.J. Coldon (10.2 ppg).

Keenen Young adds 8.9 point per game with a team-high 88 assists.

Edwyn Brown missed the regular season with a football injury, but was released in time for Althoff’s super-sectional win over Springfield Southeast on Tuesday. His return makes the Crusaders that much deeper.

“I’ve got six guys who would be the leading scorer for most teams in the state, but the guys are committed to sharing the basketball,” Leib said. “They put their personal agendas aside to do what’s best for the team.”

This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 5:44 PM with the headline "State-bound Crusaders focused on winning it all."