Redbirds Win Second Straight Regional Title – Sets Up Postseason Rematch With Edwardsville

O’FALLON – For the second year straight, the Alton Redbirds are regional champions.

“This feeling never gets old,” Alton boys basketball head coach Dylan Dudley said.

“I told the kids that hadn’t experienced last year’s championship, you know, when you win in the postseason, it’s a different kind of feeling, and the feeling that you have when you win in the postseason. It’s addicting. People want to experience it.”

The Redbirds battled the Belleville East Lancers in the IHSA Class 4A O’Fallon Regional championship game Friday night and came out on the other side with a 59-48 win.

It’s the first time Alton has won back-to-back titles since Eric Smith’s teams did so in 2015 and 2016.

“As many, many people know that have come before us in this program, coaches and players, when you play at Alton, you’re expected to play for championships,” Dudley said.

“Obviously, before last year, this program had been starving for a regional championship, and so for us to get one last year, then come back and go through what we’ve been through this year with all the adversity we’ve faced, it’s a special feeling.”

Friday’s game was close throughout with neither team going on any large runs. It remained a one or two possession game for the majority with it being tied up at 41 heading into the fourth quarter.

Alton had a huge final frame, outscoring the Lancers 18-7.

“Yeah, our kids showed some real toughness there in the fourth quarter,” Dudley said. “I mean, we had some things that really weren’t going our way for us. We were missing easy shots; they were making tough shots. We had some loose balls that we didn’t get, had some uncharacteristic turnovers leading into the fourth, but our kids buckled down.”

Alton improved to 21-11 on the season and has now won five straight.

The Redbirds were expecting to see the No. 2-seeded Belleville West Maroons in the regional championship, but they were upset by their seventh-seeded crosstown rivals on Wednesday by a score of 40-35.

East had finished the regular season having lost 15 of its final 16 games, including two losses to Alton. But the Lancers brought it on Friday.

“East is very methodical,” Dudley said. “They want to slow the game down a little bit. They didn’t try and hold the ball on us like O’Fallon did, but they run their offense and they try to turnover their ball-screen motion as many times as they want. That was a little different.”

“But our kids took Belleville East’s best shot tonight, and all due respect to them, they played about as best as they can play,” he continued. “They had some kids do some really special things and so for our kids just to hang in there and know that we’re going to get their best shot when we probably didn’t play our best, I think it says a lot about them, to be able to find a way to win a game of that magnitude, with a championship on the line, to be able to gut out a win like that, I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

Ryan Howard went off and dropped 30 points in the win. Tysean Jones added 16, O’Bryant Brown had five, and Semaj Stampley had four.

Belleville East’s season ends 10-20.

The win advances Alton to the Rock Island Sectional semifinals where it will meet a familiar foe, the Edwardsville Tigers on Tuesday, March 3 at 7 p.m. The game was announced that it will be played closer to home for both teams at Mascoutah High School.

The two teams met last season in the Alton Regional championship, a game that the Redbirds won 55-47 to win their first plaque since 2019.

They split their regular-season meetings with both teams winning the away game. The Redbirds won 73-44 on December 12 in Edwardsville and the Tigers returned the favor on February 6, winning 43-31 in Alton.

“It’s probably the game everybody wanted to see, right,” Dudley said. “I think both programs over the last two or three years have kind of established themselves as the two best teams in the league. Seems like we’ve played them 17 times over the past two, three seasons, but yeah, we’ll have our hands full. The job that coach [Dustin] Battas does with his team, I have a very, very high level of respect for him and his program and the way they do things.”

The Tigers hosted and beat Collinsville 61-43 on Friday night in their regional championship. Edwardsville improved to 23-7 and ran its winning streak to nine games.

“It’s fitting that us two will play at a neutral site pretty much halfway in between both schools,” Dudley said. “Let’s throw the ball up and see what happens.”

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