https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/highschool/ct-spt-illinois-boys-high-school-basketball-state-finals-20190316-story.html?

St. Louis area wins 2 state championships as Belleville West beats Evanston in 4A and East St. Louis tops Bogan in 3A

by Mike Clark
Chicago Tribune

As time wound down in the Class 4A state championship game Saturday night, the chants of “618! 618! 618!” filled Carver Arena.

The area-code cheer was a rallying cry from the new boys basketball capital of Illinois.

A few hours after East St. Louis rallied past Bogan to win the Class 3A title, Metro East and Southwestern Conference rival Belleville West rode a comeback past Evanston 71-59 for the 4A championship.

Ohio State recruit and defending Mr. Basketball of Illinois winner EJ Liddell had 24 points, 10 rebounds and six assists to lead the Maroons (34-4), who became the first repeat champions in the state’s biggest class since Simeon won four in a row from 2010-13.

West also is the first downstate team to repeat in the biggest class since Peoria Central in 2003-04 in Class AA.

Will Shumpert added 21 points for the Maroons, who trailed by 12 points in the second quarter and didn't take their first lead till late in the third quarter. Shumpert’s rim-rattling dunk with 4 minutes, 53 seconds to play gave Belleville West the lead for good at 52-50.

Jaheim Holden scored 20 points, Southern Illinois recruit Lance Jones 15 and Louis Lesmond 12 for Evanston (32-5), which finished third last year.

The Wildkits played in their first state final since 1984 and were trying to add to their 1968 state championship.

“That shows down-south basketball is pretty good too,” Liddell said. “(The) Chicago Public League has been great for a long time. But the Southwestern Conference this year is probably one of the best conferences in the state, hands down.”

Added Shumpert: “It shows that there's a lot of us overlooked. “In the 618, there's a lot of good players that just need to be looked at.”

Evanston raced to an 18-8 lead in the first quarter, pushing a fast tempo against the taller Maroons.

“First half, everything was going our way,” Holden said. “Shots were falling, we were making layups. We were getting to the free-throw line and making free throws.”

The Wildkits led 35-25 after Holden’s pull-up jumper with 1:36 left in the second quarter. But the Maroons started chipping away and took their first lead, 43-42, on Liddell’s jumper with 2:41 left in the third quarter.

It was back and forth till Belleville West went ahead for good on the first of Shumpert’s three dunks in the fourth quarter.

“They played a better second half than we did,” Holden said. “They adjusted on the offensive end. They knew that they had the size advantage so they used that.

“EJ was really a threat. We tried everything we could to get the ball out of his hands, but he’s a great player.”



Class 3A
Barely a year ago, East St. Louis was a program in turmoil, welcoming its third coach of the season and sixth in seven years.

Now, Saint Louis recruit Terrence Hargrove Jr. and the Flyers are state champions for the first time in program history.

East St. Louis trailed by seven with three minutes left in the fourth quarter and never led in regulation. But Richard Robinson’s tip dunk of a missed free throw with three seconds left forced overtime, and the Flyers went on to beat Bogan 68-63 in the Class 3A title game at Carver Arena.

Hargrove scored a game-high 32 points for East St. Louis (30-6), including the go-ahead jumper with 34 seconds left in overtime, and grabbed 10 rebounds.

Bogan’s 6-foot-8 Rashaun Agee matched the 6-7 Hargrove basket for basket and dunk for dunk most of the way before fouling out with 21 seconds remaining in overtime. Agee finished with 23 points and 14 rebounds.

The Flyers capped a remarkable run that started when coach Mark Chambers was hired in Jan. 2018 as their fourth coach in less than a year.

“They were not believing,” Chambers said of the Flyers. “They were like, ‘Who is this guy?’ To see us now at this level 12, 13 months later — I didn’t see it coming this way, this soon.”

“He came in here and changed the culture,” said Hargrove, a senior forward. “He came in as a defensive coach and we bought into his system. … We started believing. We knew we had a good chance of being good since the summertime.”

Agee got Bogan (30-4) rolling early with a dunk and a three-point play in the first 40 seconds, and the Bengals led 16-6 late in the first quarter.

Bogan held the lead all the way till the final 82 seconds, when Robinson’s jumper tied it at 51. Agee’s rebound basket put the Bengals back ahead. But they missed the front end of two one-and-ones before Robinson tied it again to force overtime.

East St. Louis fell behind again in overtime, trailing 59-55 with 2:35 left, but again rallied behind Hargrove. Bogan had a chance to go ahead down by two points with with eight seconds left, but a 3-pointer by Antoine Bloxton, who finished with 10 points, was off the mark. JaShawn Anderson’s three-point play with one second left accounted for the final margin.

“We played hard,” Bogan coach Arthur Goodwin said. “We came out and gave it all we could give. We made a few mistakes down at the end that cost us the game.”

This result aside, it was a breakthrough season for Bogan. The Bengals ended a string of frustrating playoff losses to South Side rival Morgan Park by advancing to state for the first time in program history.

“I’m glad we came down here,” Goodwin said. “We’re going to come back. We’re going to lose a couple seniors. But we have guys in the system who are ready to step up.”

While the title was the Flyers’ first, it was their city’s fifth. East St. Louis Lincoln, which closed in 1998, won four championships in the 1980s, including three in a row from 1987-89.

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