The Spartans continue to play teams close, salvaging a 34-32 win in Tuesday’s Class 2A regional semifinal game at home against Tuscola (17-10).

Seventeen of SJ-O’s 30 games have been settled by nine points, or less. The Spartans are 12-5 in those games.

SJ-O’s Ella Armstrong tallied a game-high 15 points, 12 in the opening half.

Taylor Barnes’ tie-breaking shot created the final margin for the Spartans, who overcame a 27-23 fourth-quarter deficit.

Hannah Dukeman, in her fifth game back following an injury that sidelined her during the first 25 games, scored six of her seven points in the fourth stanza.

The Spartans’ defense limited Tuscola to a pair of fourth-quarter field goals.

SJ-O (20-10) returns to action tonight at home at 7 o’clock in the regional championship game against Villa Grove/Heritage after snapping a four-game losing streak.

Tuesday’s win enabled SJ-O to reach the 20-win mark for the third consecutive season.

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St. Joseph-Ogden hit 5-of-5 fourth-quarter free throws on Saturday, but it wasn’t enough to help the team to a victory in the Sangamon Conference/Illini Prairie Conference Shootout at Maroa.

Auburn edged the Spartans 42-40. The teams were tied at halftime, 18-18.

The game was the 15th this season for SJ-O settled by nine points, or less.

Katie Cramer tallied a team-high 11 points for SJ-O. Ella Armstrong had eight points and Hannah Dukeman totaled six points.

The Spartans will be the top-seeded team in a Class 2A regional they will host.  SJ-O’s postseason opener will be on Feb. 11 at 6 p.m. between the winner of a Feb. 10 game between Tuscola and Clinton.

SJ-O (19-7) returns to action on Thursday in its regular-season finale at Bloomington Central Catholic.

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The Comets stayed unbeaten in Vermilion Valley Conference games by posting a 60-28 triumph at Westville on Friday.

A balanced attack led Oakwood in the opening quarter. Five different players hit field goals and the Comets led 11-10 after eight minutes.

Elijah Harden tallied six second-quarter points as Oakwood extended its lead to 26-15 at halftime.

Brevin Wells led Oakwood with 12 points. Harden and Jayden Cox hit 11 points apiece. Jackson Powell scored seven points.

The Comets had more than doubled the score after three periods, taking a 45-21 lead into the final eight minutes.

Oakwood is 6-5 overall and 2-0 in the VVC. The Comets return to action on Thursday, Dec. 26 in the Monticello Tournament, facing the host Sages at 11:30 a.m. and Tuscola at 6 p.m.

The post Oakwood boys’ basketball remains unbeaten in Vermilion County Conference play first appeared on SJO Daily.

Blake Smith scored 12 points on Saturday and Logan Nohren added 10 points as Villa Grove/Heritage held on at home to beat Sullivan, 36-34.

VG/H held a 21-10 halftime lead.

Issac Mahoe scored six points for the Hawks.

VG/H (6-2) returns to action on Tuesday at Tuscola.

The post VGH boys’ basketball edges Sullivan first appeared on SJO Daily.

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

The post Toyota of Danville Classic: A Tradition that Adapts to the Times first appeared on SJO Daily.

Villa Grove/Heritage Girls’ Basketball

The Blue Devils (4-1) overcame a halftime deficit on Tuesday to post a 49-43 victory at Tuscola. The host Warriors led, 22-20, at halftime, but VG/H went on a 17-5 tear in the third quarter and took control.

Aliya Holloman scored 18 points, Kyleigh Block had 15 and Samantha Campbell hit a season-high 12 points for the Blue Devils.

Block has nailed a team-high 10 three-pointers through five games.

The Blue Devils will play their home-opener tonight against Westville (0-5).

Villa Grove/Heritage Boys’ basketball

The Hawks (3-1) opened and closed the Cerro Gordo Thanksgiving Tournament with wins and captured third place.

VG/H topped Sangamon Valley 50-20 in Monday’s opener and followed with a 51-36 triumph over Windsor/Stewardson-Strasburg.

A third-round loss on Friday to LeRoy, 49-23, set the stage for Saturday’s bounceback game, a 59-44 verdict over Cerro Gordo/Bement.

Jake Eversole canned a season-high 22 points against CG/B. Logan Nohren (12 points) and Issac Mahoe (11 points) also had their top-scoring performances of the week.

Mahoe canned three three-pointers and Eversole hit two treys.

VG/H led 40-33 after three quarters, but pulled away for the win.

Against LeRoy, the Hawks connected on only six second-half points. Mahoe had five points, Sam Reno had three points and Ierik Sorenson also scored three points.

The points by Reno and Sorenson came on three-pointers.

Against Windsor/SS, VG/H used a 13-2 third-quarter run to take control.  Nohren tallied a team-high 11 points. Contributing eight points apiece were Eversole, Reno and Blake Smith.

Eversole fired in 13 points and Nick Coffin had 12 points in the season’s first game, against Sangamon Valley. Smith added seven points.

The Hawks led 32-5 at halftime.

Eversole was picked for the all-tournament team after scoring 45 points for the week.

The Hawks play their home-opener on Tuesday at Heritage against Urbana University High School.

The post VGH boys’ basketball takes third at Cerro Gordo Thanksgiving Tournament, girls top Tuscola first appeared on SJO Daily.

The Spartans (4-1) dropped their home-opener on Tuesday, 65-44, to Paris.

Taylor Barnes scored a team-high nine points. Finishing with six points apiece were Alyssa Hamilton, Payton Jacob and Ashlyn Lannert.

Paris jumped into a 14-6 lead after one quarter.

Lannert and Katie Cramer were picked for the all-tournament team the previous week at the Lady Bunny/Lady Falcon Classic.

SJ-O returns to action tonight at home against Tuscola.

St. Joseph-Ogden Wrestling

Three Spartan underclassmen were mentioned in the honorable mention category by The Illinois Best Weekly in its preseason Class 1A individual state rankings.

Junior A.J.  Wagner received notice at 113 pounds as did teammates Isaiah Moore, a sophomore, at 120 pounds and Isaiah Immke, a junior, at 138 pounds.

The Spartans open the season on Saturday at Danville with a series of dual meets that will also include Urbana, LeRoy and Olympia.

The post SJ-O Girls’ Basketball drops home opener, Wagner, Immke, Moore recognized by The Illinois Best Weekly first appeared on SJO Daily.