Pranger steps up in Edwardsville's win over East St. Louis

EDWARDSVILLE – Seeing the box-and-one defense that East St. Louis threw at Edwardsville in their Southwestern Conference girls basketball game Wednesday night didn't come as a surprise to the Tigers' Rachel Pranger.

“This is the second time (the Tigers had seen it; Metro ran it on EHS in their early-season matchup); seeing it now, we're going to be seeing it in the future too,” Pranger said following the Tigers' 55-32 win over the Flyers at Lucco-Jackson Gym. “I think it helped us just to run the offenses against it and helped to learn cuts and stuff for it.

“We have to work on our screening too, especially if Kate (Martin) has a girl on her, we have to screen her too, and it'll cause a lot of openings.”

Pranger and the Tigers knew going in that it could be a physical matchup between the teams. “They work hard every game, so we knew that coming into the game, it was going to be a hard game; they always give us a real good game.”

Edwardsville opens play in the Visitation Christmas Tournament against Parkway South at 1 p.m. Saturday; it's the first time for EHS in one of the top girls holiday tournaments in the St. Louis area and Pranger is looking forward to the challenge.

“I'm really excited; we haven't been in this before and I know some of the girls, so I'm excited," she said.

Pranger had 14 points for her team, behind only Myriah Hayward's 17 on the night.

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