Stoddard County association's top teams kick it into high gear

The Advance boys basketball team heads toward Saturday night's showdown with South Iron riding high.

The Hornets defeated Woodland 74-41 on Tuesday for their 10th win in the last 11 games. They moved into a second-place tie in the Stoddard County Athletic Association.

Advance (15-6, 5-2 SCAA) plays Delta on Friday night before Saturday's meeting with South Iron at Black River Coliseum in Poplar Bluff, Mo., that likely will decide the top seed in Class 2 District 2.

"We've been working hard in practice, working on our defense and trying to get team defense," Advance senior Daryl Wade said. "I think we're starting to come along."

Advance's defense helped lead to transition baskets for junior Alex Steil, who scored 25 points, including 13 in the second period.

"He got out in transition, got some easy buckets," Advance coach Joe Shoemaker said. "He moved well on offense. He played a good game against Dexter Friday night [in a 77-58 win], so he's starting to shoot the ball a little bit better for us."

Added Woodland coach David Mirly: "He's an outstanding basketball player. We knew he was when we came in tonight. They just have so many horses; it's hard to pick one out and try to stop him. We need to be able to double-team a couple of their guys [but] when that happens, the other ones are going to be left open."

Nine players scored in the game for Advance.

"They have a lot of good players there," Mirly said. "They're well-balanced, well-coached. They move the ball better than any team we've faced so far this year. I told my guys that coming in that we had to make sure we kept our hands up, talk and watch people sneaking in behind us.

"But when you don't face a team that moves the ball around as well as they do all the time, you're just not ready for it. They caught us off-guard a lot of times tonight."

Advance will be without senior James Masters against Delta on Friday. Masters was ejected in the fourth quarter Tuesday after being whistled for a flagrant foul and must sit out Friday's game, per MSHSAA rules.

"We can't look past them," Shoemaker said of Delta. "They've been a little bit up and down this year. We've got to come out and defend and work on that first."

Cubs lead SCAA

The first-place team in the SCAA is Bell City, which improved to 7-0 in the league and 18-3 overall with its 90-58 win against Dexter on Tuesday.

The Cubs have the inside and outside game going: Six-foot-9 junior Will Bogan scored 24 points and sophomore guard Nick Niemczyk scored a game-high 27 with five 3-pointers.

Dexter wasn't able to hold down both players in both halves.

"We just left [Niemczyk] open maybe six times the first half and I think he hit five of them," Dexter coach Eric Sitze said. "You just have to stick somebody with him, just stay with him constantly, because if he gets an open look at it, he's going to knock it down most of the time.

"We did a real good job on [Bogan] the first half, collapsing on him," Sitze added. "The second half they were more in transition, opened the floor up a little bit, so we couldn't do as much with him the second half. He didn't dribble it as much and was able to get it a little deeper in the paint."

Jeff Liggins, an all-state forward last year, even chipped in one of his better offensive games this season with 15 points.

"I think we stepped up our pressure on defense [in the second half] which allowed us to get in our transition game a little better and we ran the floor a lot better," Bell City coach Brian Brandtner said. "That first half, Dexter came out and stymied us. They played a solid game. I don't think we really played that bad the first half; they were just taking some things away from us. But we were able to make some adjustments against the zone at the half and we did a much better job the second half."