Saturday, January 11, 2020 

Varsity (SJO HS Main Gym)
Varsity:  8 Minute Quarters – 10 Minute Halftimes & 12-15 Minute Warm-Ups

11:00 AM: SE (Locker Room) Crete-Monee vs. Mahomet-Seymour NW (Locker Room)
12:30 PM: SW (Locker Room) Kankakee vs. Danville NE (Locker Room)
2:00 PM:  SE (Locker Room) Rich Central vs. Champaign Central NW (Locker Room)
3:30 PM: SW (Locker Room) Cissna Park vs. Monticello NE (Locker Room)
5:00 PM: SE (Locker Room) Pleasant Plains vs. Notre Dame La Salette NW (Locker Room)
6:30 PM: SW (Locker Room) Maine South vs. Normal Community NE (Locker Room)
8:00 PM: SE (Locker Room) Farmington vs. St. Joseph-Ogden NW (Locker Room)

Junior Varsity (SJO PRACTICE GYM)
JV (8 Minute Quarters – 8 Minute Halftimes & 10-12 Minute Warm-Ups) Games MAY Start Up to 15 Minutes Early
9:00 AM: (Locker Room-TBA) Crete-Monee vs. Mahomet-Seymour (Locker Room-TBA)
10:30 AM: (Locker Room-TBA) Kankakee vs. Danville (Locker Room-TBA)
12:00 PM: (Locker Room-TBA) Rich Central vs. Champaign Central (Locker Room-TBA)
1:30 PM: (Locker Room-TBA) Cissna Park vs. Monticello (Locker Room-TBA)
3:00 PM: (Locker Room-TBA) Pleasant Plains vs. Notre Dame La Salette (Locker Room-TBA)
4:30 PM: (Locker Room-TBA) Maine South vs. Normal Community (Locker Room-TBA)
6:00 PM: (Locker Room-TBA) Farmington vs. St. Joseph-Ogden (Locker Room-TBA)

*****Home team is listed on the right for all games

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St. Joseph-Ogden’s boys’ basketball team capped a perfect first week by winning all five games by double-digit margins and capturing the team title in the 31st Toyota of Danville Classic.

On Friday, the Spartans handed Cissna Park its lone loss of the week, 65-49 before winning twice on Saturday, 74-39 over Schlarman Academy and 59-49 against Watseka.

Tournament most valuable player Chance Izard led the way.

The SJ-O senior tallied 93 points for the week, 49 of those coming on Saturday.

He lit up the scoreboard with 25 points against Schlarman and notched 24 against Watseka in the evening game.

In the Friday win over Cissna Park, Izard tossed in 18 points. He hit at least one three-point shot in each of the team’s five games last week.

Ty Pence posted his first varsity double-double against the Timberwolves. The freshman had 14 points and cleared a team-high 12 rebounds.

SJ-O led CP 13-11 after one quarter, but pulled into a 31-26 cushion at halftime.

Drew Coursey downed 10 points and Lukas Hutcherson hit nine against CP. Payton Cain and Conner Hodge each cleared five rebounds.

Cain, who was SJ-O’s second all-tournament pick, contributed 12 points against Schlarman.

In less than a 2 ½-minute span, which stretched into the early stages of the third period, the Spartans used an 18-0 run to move into an insurmountable 45-22 lead against the Hilltoppers.

Coursey claimed a team-high five rebounds. Braydon Rupert was next with four rebounds.

Pence and Izard made sure to keep distance from Watseka in the final game. They combined for 17 of the team’s 19 fourth-period points, nine by Pence who ended with a career-high 17 points.

For the week, Pence was 9-for-9 from the free throw line.

The team’s balance was shown by the statistical distributions. In five games, five different players led the team in rebounding.

“I like the way our guys competed throughout the tournament,” SJ-O coach Kiel Duval said. “We played hard. We are starting to become more together each game.

“The biggest thing is they are carrying over good habits from practice that are necessary to be successful in varsity games. There are areas that need to be cleaned up, but that is what this week of practice is for.

“We will breakdown film and rep those deficiencies. The players know how good our schedule is and how every night is going to be a battle. The little things really matter in games like that.”

SJ-O (5-0) returns to action with back-to-back home games to end the week, Friday against Rantoul and Saturday against Tri-Valley.

2019 All-Tournament Team:
Emmanuel Garcia Camilo, Notre Dame de La Salette
Jamal Taylor, Schlarman Academy
Conner Curry, Watseka
Cale Steinbaugh, Georgetown, Ridge Farm
Ian Rogers, Cissna Park
Payton Cain, St. Joseph-Ogden

All-Tournament Team MVP:
Chance Izard, St. Joseph-Ogden

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St. Joseph-Ogden’s boys’ basketball team opened its season with a win on Tuesday, despite missing 9 of 17 free throws in the opening round of the 31st Spartan Classic.

SJ-O upended Georgetown-Ridge Farm, 65-37.

Chance Izard scored 19 points and Jordan Kelly added 12 points for the Spartans, who turned a 7-4 lead after one quarter into a 21-11 advantage at halftime.

Izard and Kelly were two of five SJ-O players who connected on a three-pointer.

Coach Keil Duval started four seniors – Payton Cain, Drew Coursey, Conner Hodge and Izard – along with freshman Ty Pence.

Cain scored eight points, Pence had seven and Luke Renfrew chipped in with six points.

SJ-O continued its winning ways on Wednesday, knocking off Notre Dame de La Salette, 48-37.

Cain registered a double-double with 10 points and 10 steals.

Pence ended with eight points, including 4-of-4 from the free throw line in a game where the Spartans were 6-of-12 overall from the line.

Izard and Andrew Beyers each scored seven points.

Cain collected a team-high seven rebounds. Pence and Hodge each gathered four rebounds.

The Spartans scored nine of the game’s first 10 points and held a 41-20 fourth-quarter lead.

The Spartans (2-0) return to action at 8 p.m. on Friday against Cissna Park.

All six teams will play twice in the round-robin event on Saturday. The final-day SJ-O games will be at 11:30 a.m. against Schlarman Academy and at 7 p.m. against Watseka.

St. Joseph-Ogden Girls’ basketball

The Spartans trailed after each of the first two quarters on Monday against Tuscola, but rallied to register a 50-46 overtime win.

Katie Cramer scored 14 points to lead SJ-O. Both Cramer and Payton Jacob nailed three-pointers in OT to help the Spartans pull away.

Taylor Barnes scored nine points and Abby Behrens added eight for SJ-O.

SJ-O (5-1) returns to action tonight at Danville. The Spartans received votes in the first Class 2A state poll, which was released on Wednesday.

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There was a time in the late 1980s that St. Joseph-Ogden had a leg up on the competition and it had nothing to do with the quality of the boys’ basketball program.

The advantage was the timing for the school’s annual holiday tournament. It came after the multitude of events that marked Thanksgiving week and it preceded the plethora of tournaments that take place immediately after Christmas.

The Leader Classic was a community staple in mid-December, starting and finishing before the Christmas holidays.

The entry list was a literal list of Who’s Who in Central Illinois basketball.

Chrisman, which has more than 1,600 wins in its history, was a participant. So were storied programs such as Monticello, Tuscola and Cissna Park, each of which have at least 1,400 wins. State-ranked teams from Paxton-Buckley-Loda, Unity and Armstrong-Potomac had their turns in the event that made its debut in 1989.

And don’t forget the SJ-O Spartans, who have more tournament titles (17) than all opposing schools combined in the first 30 years of the extravaganza.

“It exploded,” said Randy Wolken, who was the school’s boys’ basketball coach when the tournament began.

“The best teams in the area wanted to be in.

“The first year, we had five teams and right away after that, we had eight. We had our pick of the litter. No one else was doing it.

“You wanted to attract the best schools because you wanted great competition.”

Several schools that wanted to compete couldn’t break existing contracts when the Leader Classic began and had to wait a year to join.

Wolken and long-time SJ-O athletic director Dale Doehring were instrumental in getting the tournament established.

It wasn’t difficult to sell school administrators on the idea.

“They pretty well went for it,” Wolken said, “and I liked it from the aspect that I got four more home games.”

At the outset, there was a secondary advantage for Wolken and his teams.

“We could sit back and relax at Christmas-time,” he said.

The time of holiday leisure was short-lived.

“After a few years, we couldn’t get another tourney (in January), so we got in at Monticello (the week after Christmas),” Wolken said.

SJ-O superintendent Brian Brooks – who coached basketball at the school for 15 years – is not surprised at the tournament’s longevity.

“It was a tradition that our community wrapped their arms around,” Brooks said. “A big part (of the success) is that people at the school, and The Leader (newspaper) committed to it.

“The Leader played a big part with its support.”

As the years passed, more than the basketball schedules were changing. A growing number of schools were arranging their academic calendars to complete first-semester final exams before the Christmas break.

A week-long basketball tournament that coincided with final exams was not a good combination.
Since 2016, the SJ-O event was reduced from eight to six teams with each school playing all of the others in a round-robin format.

In 2018, The Leader newspaper closed its doors and the title sponsor changed to Toyota of Danville.
This year, another change was introduced. The tournament dates were moved up two weeks. First-round games will take place on Dec. 3.

The final day, Saturday, Dec. 7, will be an opportunity for each school to be showcased twice.
Defending tournament champion Cissna Park returns, but there are three newcomers in the field: Georgetown-Ridge Farm, Notre Dame La Salette and Watseka.

Brooks is optimistic that more expansion will take place.

“The last few years, it was more difficult to get teams because there was so much going on,” he said. “It’s not that they were not interested in coming, but the timing of it.

“We’ve gotten good feedback and may be back to eight in the near future.”

This year’s list of tournament entries features schools all within a 75-mile radius of St. Joseph.

In recent years, the tournament included schools traveling from Chicago Longwood and Stanford Olympia. Longwood bowed out after last year’s event.

While some coaches enjoyed seeing schools and styles of play they might not otherwise see in the regular season, there was a flip side to the long-distance commuter teams.

“The one negative from that far away is that you don’t get many fans, and the bottom line is that you need people in the stands to support paying the officials and the scorekeepers,” Wolken said.

“If it can’t break even, it can’t go too many years.”

Three-plus decades into the tournament’s existence, the staying power has been confirmed.

Though SJ-O twice had streaks of at least five tournament championships in a row, Wolken insisted it wasn’t because of scheduling.

“We didn’t just get teams we could beat,” Wolken said. “We had the best we could get in the area.

“You don’t want one good team and five or six poor ones. You want competitive teams and competitive games.

It can be tough to get everything to fall into place.”

Spartan administrators are hopeful that by reinventing itself with a new name and a new time slot, the tournament will remain viable for years to come.

The Toyota of Danville Classic will be held at St. Joseph-Ogden High School from Dec. 3 to Dec. 7. Home teams are listed first.

Tues., Dec. 3 @ 5p.m. Cissna Park vs. Notre Dame La Salette
Tues., Dec. 3 @ 6:30 p.m. SJO vs. Georgetown Ridge-Farm
Tues., Dec. 3 @ 8 p.m. Danville Schlarman vs. Watseka

Wed., Dec. 4 @ 5 p.m. Cissna Park vs. Watseka
Wed., Dec. 4 @ 6:30 p.m. Danville Schlarman vs. Georgetown Ridge-Farm
Wed., Dec. 4 @ 8 p.m. SJO vs. Notre Dame La Salette

Fri. Dec. 6 @ 5 p.m. Notre Dame La Salette vs. Danville Schlarman
Fri. Dec. 6 @ 6:30 p.m.Georgetown Ridge-Farm vs. Watseka
Fri. Dec. 6 @ 8 p.m. SJO vs. Cissna Park

Sat. Dec. 7 @ 10 a.m. Cissna Park vs. Georgetown Ridge-Farm
Sat. Dec. 7 @ 11:30 a.m. SJO vs. Danville Schlarman
Sat. Dec. 7 @ 1 p.m. Notre Dame La Salette vs. Watseka

Sat. Dec. 7 @ 4 p.m. Danville Schlarman vs. Cissna Park
Sat. Dec 7 @ 5:30 p.m. Georgetown Ridge-Farm vs. Notre Dame La Salettesjo
Sat. Dec. 7 @ 7 p.m. Watseka vs. SJO

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