East Peoria coach Wes Miller had no idea who he was watching early on against Springfield Our Savior's on Tuesday night.
Not because he's in his first year with East Peoria, either.
"We weren't playing our defensive principles. We weren't alert. We weren't executing offensively," Miller said.
It took two media timeouts for East Peoria to rediscover themselves. And when they did, they mounted a big first-half charge to take a stunning halftime lead, then steadily pulled away from the No.14 Eagles for a 71-51 victory that pushed them into the championship game of the Central Illinois Hall of Fame Classic.
"Sometimes you're going to get your butt kicked, that's part of basketball," Miller said. "I don't like it but that's part of it, and if we were going to get our butt kicked, let's get it kicked our way. And I thought our guys really adjusted and we started to play the way we had the first four games of the year."
Michael Saunders Jr. scored 20 and Jeremiah Davenport added 19 to lead the Tigers (5-0), who went 17 of 20 from the foul line and won the battle of the boards against the bigger Eagles (2-2).
That earned the right to play the winner of No. 13 Pleasant Plains and New Berlin for the tournament title.
"That shows what we can do," Davenport said. "As a whole group, we just have to go out every night and just execute what we can do at the highest level. You guys saw it tonight."
Jace Easley led Springfield Our Savior's with 20 points, 15 rebounds, 3 steals and 4 blocks, but his fellow scorers Conor McCaffrey and Drew Dejaynes started off hot, but cooled down and struggled in the middle quarters. McCaffrey scored 12 and added 6 assists, Dejaynes paced himself with 10 points, 5 rebounds and 2 steals.
"We got off to a good start but give East Peoria a lot of credit. They played harder than we did, which is very unacceptable for me to stomach," Eagles coach Todd Dejaynes said. "They were the more physical team. And I give them a lot of credit."
Indeed, the Eagles looked as if they were going to blow out East Peoria in the first 6 minutes.
Easley had a huge part in it.
The Guard/Forward hybrid bullied his way to six straight points to open the game, and the Eagles raced to a 19-4 lead before East Peoria seemed to realize the game had tipped off. At one point, Easley had outscored East Peoria 12-8 as the Eagles built a 23-8 advantage nearing the midpoint of the first quarter.
That's when Miller made a couple of subtle adjustments that got them on track.
They slowed Easley with physical double-teams in the post, and they began jumping the passing lanes, and at one point East Peoria held Our Savior's without a field goal for nearly the whole second quarter. They pieced together a 14-1 run of their own during the stretch, and Davis DeJulius made a couple foul shots just before haltime to give East Peoria a 34-31 lead.
The Eagles slump endured well into the second half.
Davenport drilled a 3-pointer right out of the locker room, and Our Savior's proceeded to miss 10 consecutive field-goal attempts at one point, as the hot-shooting Peoria stunning run eventually reached 22-5 to start the 3rd quarter.
It was about that point that Dejaynes tore the wrapper off a peice of gum.
Might have been an antacid.
The state's top-ranked defense though the first couple weeks of the season suddenly struggled to guard East Peoria on the perimeter. And regardless of whether Easley was in the paint or on the outside, the Eagles had trouble chasing down deep rebounds, which gave East Peoria second and third chances on several trips down the floor.
That was enough to send East Peoria to their first win over a ranked team since beating Peoria in 2014.
"We haven't arrived, guys," Miller said. "It was a good night, I'm excited, but we haven't arrived or crossed the finish line."
THE TAKEAWAY
Our Savior's was two different teams the first 6 minutes and the final 18, Easley was agressive going to the basket, with McCaffrey and Dejaynes taking care of the ball at the start. But once the middle bogged down, Our Savior's lost all semblance of an offensive rhythm. It wound up 5 of 15 on 3s and shot 33% from the field overall.
East Peoria still hasn't played from behind in the second half this season. But the way Peoria handled the Eagles was far more impressive than their previous opening wins. They turned the ball over a mere 11 times while preventing Our Savior's from scoring a single point in transition.