Vandals fall in first game of DuQuoin Classic

DUQUOIN – The Vandals like to play fast up and down the court.

Cairo's style borders on reckless abandon.

And the Pilots were able to breed some chaos from their own chaotic style on Monday in the opening game of the DuQuoin Tip-Off Classic.

Senior Colton Woolsey used his size to dominate the post with a double-double, but Cairo forced the Vandals into 31 turnovers and scored 42 points in the second half to take a 75-56 victory.

“We talked about playing our style and our tempo under control, and not letting them speed us up, but that’s exactly what happened,” said Vandals coach Brian Buscher. “They took us out of our offensive transition for the majority of the night.”

The Vandals (1-1) committed 21 second-half turnovers, leading to 24 points for Cairo, which outscored Vandalia, 42-27, over the final 16 minutes of the game.

In the fourth quarter, Cairo scored directly off of eight of Vandalia’s 11 turnovers, and used a 20-9 run over the final 4:47 to turn an eight-point game into a blowout. The Pilots doubled up Vandalia, 24-12, during that period.

“We were trying to make stuff happen by threading the needle with passes,” Buscher said. “One of the things that we had talked about leading up this game was the triple threat – a pass fake, shot fake and getting ourselves open.

“With a type of team like that that is flying around (defensively), we should be able to get back cuts, set good screens and get open.”

When that did happen, the Vandals looked like a team capable of winning the game, and actually held the lead at five different junctures.

Woolsey had a lot to do with that – especially in the first half, when he played the finest two quarters of his career by scoring 12 of his 19 points and grabbing eight of his 14 rebounds.

“They didn’t have anybody over 6-foot-1, so we should have gotten more inside buckets,” Buscher said. “They didn’t allow us to with their pressure, but we could have hurt them more often – not to say that Colton didn’t do a good job.”

Junior Luke Hollinshead also played well inside, with eight points and eight rebounds, and junior Collin Nestleroad added nine points and eight boards.

Cairo senior RaQuan Nelson led the game with 28 points, while senior Wade Harre added nine and senior Jake Shulman added seven for the Vandals.

Vandalia showed patience on offense early in the game, using 42 seconds on the first possession and running off several more large chunks of time over the first four minutes of the game to grab a 7-5 lead.

Cairo would erase that, but the Vandals had a 5-0 run to end the first quarter and made the first basket in the second period to go ahead, 20-17.

“We were scoring more,” Buscher said. “It wasn’t so much out of control, so we had better possessions more often.”

But once the Pilots retook the lead with 4:21 left in the first half, they would only trail one more time in the game – after a 3-pointer by Woolsey 58 seconds into the third quarter.

That shot was followed by an 18-2 run by Cairo over the next 4:28.

The Vandals have three more games in tournament, but won’t play again until Friday night.

At about 7:45 p.m., Vandalia will meet DuQuoin, and on Saturday, the Vandals face Flora at 2 p.m. and Hamilton County at 6 p.m.

Notes: Junior Austin Durbin scored the first two points of his career … Vandalia struggled from the free-throw line, making just 6-of-15 shots … Cairo scored 38 points off of Vandalia’s turnovers, while the Vandals scored 20 points off of 12 Cairo miscues … Vandalia beat Cairo, 62-56, last season.

Box score
Monday, Dec. 2
Cairo 75
Vandalia 56
V: 18-11-15-12—56
C: 17-16-18-24—75
Points: Woolsey, 19; Harre, 9; Nestleroad, 9; Hollinshead, 8; Shulman, 7; Durbin, 2; Carson Smith, 2.
Rebounds: Woolsey, 14; Hollinshead, 8; Nestleroad, 8; Team, 6; Durbin, 3; Colin Ledbetter, 2; Harre, 1; Robby Lott, 1; Shulman, 1; Smith, 1.
Assists: Harre, 3; Nestleroad, 2; Smith, 2; Woolsey, 2; Durbin, 1.
Steals: Woolsey, 2.
Blocks: Woolsey, 2.
Record: 1-1