Edwardsville senior guard Kate Martin, right, plays defense during Wednesday’s non-conference game against St. Joseph’s Academy in St. Louis.
Edwardsville senior guard Kate Martin, right, plays defense during Wednesday’s non-conference game against St. Joseph’s Academy in St. Louis.
Following Wednesday’s victory over St. Joseph’s Academy, the Edwardsville Tigers are officially on the home stretch of the 2017-18 regular season.
The state’s top-ranked Tigers (19-0) will finish out the regular season with six Southwestern Conference games. The postseason begins the week of Feb. 12.
“We’ll get back at the grind of the conference next week,” Edwardsville coach Lori Blade said. “We’ll see how that goes, but January’s a long month.”
Edwardsville will travel to Belleville East at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and then host Belleville West at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
The schedule rounds out with a home game against Granite City on Jan. 30, a road date with East St. Louis on Feb. 1, Senior Night against O’Fallon on Feb. 6 and a road contest at Alton on Feb. 8. All games will start at 7:30 p.m.
Sitting at 8-0 in the conference, the Tigers currently lead O’Fallon and Belleville East, which are both 8-2 in league play, in the SWC.
Edwardsville is trying to win its ninth conference championship.
“It’s important to us. We just need to keep working hard and taking it one game at a time,” Pranger said.
The last non-EHS team to win the SWC championship was East St. Louis in 2008-09.
Since then, Edwardsville has dominated the conference.
The Tigers have won 124 of their last 125 league games with an 82-79 loss to Collinsville on Dec. 3, 2015, as their only blemish in the previous nine years.
And for as important as winning a ninth consecutive SWC championship is to the Tigers, the Edwardsville girls have sights set on the program’s first-ever state title.
The Tigers, of course, return three starters -- Kate Martin, Pranger and Myriah Noodel-Haywood -- from last year’s team that lost 41-40 to Geneva on a putback in the closing seconds of the Class 3A state tournament.
The painful memory of watching Geneva celebrate a state championship has served as motivation for the Tigers this season.
“It serves as motivation and makes us want to hard in every game and every practice,” Pranger said.
Edwardsville is surely battled-tested for a postseason run that would include at least two more games against SWC opponents and a meeting with either fourth-ranked Rock Island (15-7) or ninth-ranked Normal Community (16-4) in the Champaign Centennial Sectional.
The Rocks, who have lost to EHS the past two seasons in the sectional, feature junior sensation Brea Beal, a 6-0 forward averaging 20.6 points and 10.4 rebounds, and Texas Tech recruit Chrislyn Carr, a 5-5 senior point guard averaging 17.9 points.
Beal was named Ms. Basketball of Illinois last season, after averaging 20.6 points and 9.8 rebounds.
The Tigers won at Normal Community 44-33 on Dec. 9.
Regardless of who stands in the way in the postseason, the Tigers feel like they’ll be ready after facing a strong schedule.
En route to a championship at the Visitation Christmas Tournament, Edwardsville beat Missouri’s top Class 5 team and defending champ Kirkwood in the semis and the top Class 4 team and defending champion Incarnate Word in the final.
EHS also owns wins over Whitfield, ranked No. 4 in Missouri Class 3, and St. Joseph’s, ranked No. 10 in Missouri Class 5.
The Tigers have won 14 regional championships, 12 sectional championships, five super-sectional championships and own two second-place finishes at the state tournament under Blade, who is 61-15 in the postseason with Edwardsville.
Seeds for the Class 4A postseason will be released Feb. 1 and the schedule on Feb. 2.
The Tigers do know they will be in Sub-Sectional A of the Champaign Centennial Sectional with Alton, Belleville East, Belleville West, Champaign Centennial, Chatham Glenwood, Collinsville, Granite City, O’Fallon, Quincy and Springfield. Glenwood and Belleville East are regional hosts.