East Prairie upsets No. 3 Bell City

ORAN -- In a mild upset, East Prairie edged Bell City in an exciting finale of the opening round of the Oran Invitational on Monday.

No. 6-seed East Prairie slipped past No. 3 Bell City, the defending Class 1 state champion, 72-71, in overtime. "We got down by 11 in the third and it didn't look very good," said East Prairie coach Jason Irby, "but our kids just kept battling and we made some big plays down the stretch."

Preston Shoemaker, who tallied a game-high 28 points, scored nine in the third quarter to lead an Eagle rally to within two at 51-49 going into the fourth quarter.

Poor free-throw shooting scuttled several Bell City chances to clinch victory in the fourth quarter.

The Cubs hit only 3-of-10 free-throw attempts in the period -- 0-for-4 down the stretch by a freshman, with two of the misses on the front end of one-and-one situations.

"We've got a lot of young kids," said Bell City coach David Heeb, "but we're going to have young kids all year, so that can't be our excuse. We've got to play better and we've got to play better right away."

With Bell City ahead 63-59 at the two-minute mark, East Prairie's Roger Swann converted a conventional 3-point play to close the gap to 63-62.

Both teams struggled to score until Dez Johnson counted on a putback to lift the Eagles to a 64-63 lead with less than a minute remaining.

On Bell City's next trip downcourt, A. J. Henry's putback sent the Cubs ahead 65-64, before Shoemaker's clutch jumper with 16 seconds left regained the lead for East Prairie at 66-65.

Blaine Stewart, Bell City's co-scoring leader with Henry at 17 points apiece, was fouled with two seconds to go. He missed the first, but knocked down the second to send the contest into overtime.

The Eagles, led by Jordan Sanders four points, outscored the Cubs 6-5 in the overtime period. A Shoemaker steal thwarted the Cubs last chance as time expired.

Said Irby, "Preston (Shoemaker) was huge for us tonight. He made a lot of big shots when we needed them and came up with a big defensive play at the end to ice it."

"You've got to give all the credit to East Prairie," said Heeb, who led his team to a runner-up finish in last year's tourney. "They played hard. They executed and we didn't. This was not a fluke. Tonight, East Prairie was better than us."

In the night's opening game, defending champion Scott City, the top seed, got off to a good start with a 72-40 thrashing of No. 8 Richland.

"Our goal is always to win the tournament," said Scott City coach Lance Amick. "It doesn't matter if we're No. 8 or No. 1. We won the tournament last year and I just hope we can get back there."

Led by the 32 points of Mark Dannenmueller, the Rams were never threatened.

Mark Johnston chipped in with 16 points and Andy Stephens added nine.

"Mark (Dannenmueller) fits our system great," said Amick, of his 6-foot-6 all-stater. "He's a team player and does whatever we need him to do. The kids play around him and that all works pretty well. The best thing about Mark is he's an unselfish player and these kids love playing with each other."

In the other contest, Twin Rivers held off a less talented, but feisty Oran crew 78-57.

"We wanted to match the intensity of the other team and I felt we did that," said Oran's first-year coach Jason Andrews. "Our inexperience really showed tonight in handling the basketball. They forced a lot of turnovers and got free on a lot of our defensive mix-ups."

Clayton Scherer paced the Eagles with 23 points, 16 in the first half when Oran trailed by only 36-29. Chris Asmus scored 14 and Chase Seyer had nine.

A 23-12 third-quarter disparity blew the game open for the Royals, who were led by Michael Lance with 25. Dexter Moore chipped in with 16 and Kade McBroom had 10.

Twin Rivers hit 21-of-26 from the charity stripe.

Oran Invitational action resumes tonight with a first-round game between No. 4 Kelly and No. 5 Scott Central at 6:30 p.m., followed by a losers' bracket elimination game between Bell City and Oran at 8.