State Farm Classic Roundup

I was a little surprised to get the #2 seed heading into the Classic. I think a lot of that was on the anticipated return of Tevin Rumley and how good we might be with Tevin. I was pleased with how we played for the most part in Bloomington, going 3-1 on the week. We started off a little slow and Tri-Valley did a nice job of defending Jake Junis. I thought we did just enough to get by in the opening round. Dylan Austin led us with 15 points. J.C. McNinch made his debut returning from a fractured foot and scored all 7 of his points in the first quarter. It was great to see J.C. in uniform again! Matt Lauts chipped in 9 points against Tri-Valley. Lauts and Junis both dealt with foul trouble throughout.



The Peoria Christian game was a very tough loss. As we have so many games this season, we really struggled shooting 31% on the night. This one was particularly tough because I thought we ran offense well, took good shots, and defended and played extremely hard on the night. This was one that I thought we deserved to win but just couldn't get shots to fall. It was even tougher knowing we were so close to the semi-finals with Tevin coming back the next day. Jake Junis led us with 15; Dylan Austin added 12 and Matt Lauts 10 points.



The highlight of the week was a 77-65 win over Providence St. Mel. We led by as much as 22 in the third quarter. Tevin Rumley debuted with 19 points and 4 assists. Junis hit four three's and finished with 17 as did Matt Lauts. Brett Chappell finished with 15 (including 3 3-PT FG). We just seemed to have a different bounce in our step for this one. We shot and moved the ball with confidence against a quick St. Mel team. Without a doubt the 4th quarter highlight was the Junis to Rumley alley-oop dunk. Having another scorer like Tevin on the floor helped open things up for Matt Lauts inside and our shooters on the perimeter.



The Macon-Meridian game was our second of the day and third in 24 hours and it showed. We played with tired legs. We did not pressure well defensively and they controlled the tempo the first 30 minutes of the game. Offensively, we took the first available jumps shot way too often instead of working for a better shot. To our kids credit though, we executed the last two minutes of the game flawlessly and came from 8 points down to win 48-46. Brett Chappell scored all 6 of his points in this stretch. Tevin Rumley came up with a huge dunk and a steal to seal the win. Junis and Lauts both struggled through foul trouble again. For us to win a game with Jake only scoring 2 points was big. Tevin Rumley led us with 16 and Dylan Austin added 14.



Jake Junis struggled with some lower back issues throughout the tournament and did not score at his usual clip. He did gut it out and rebounded extremely well for us. Dylan Austin quietly put together a very solid tournament averaging 12 points per game. Matt Lauts showed some improvement for us also. Overall, we have to cut down on the turnovers. We still put the ball in the wrong person's hands at certain times by outletting the ball to a post player or giving the ball to a smaller guard on a backdoor cut amongst the trees. All in all, if we stay healthy this could be a fun team to watch grow here in the second half of the season.