St. Louis U. High’s varsity basketball team rebounded from its end-of-season loss to De Smet with two District tournament wins—beating Fox 83-33, and a 48-33 victory over Oakville. 

SLUH came out of the gate pretty flat against De Smet, and never really got into a groove against the Spartans. They scored the first four points of the game, thanks to baskets from junior AJ Walker Jr. and senior Jaden McClain, but they played from behind for the remainder of the night. 

The Jr. Bills kept it close in the opening quarter, trailing just 16-13 heading into the second. Yet their offense remained largely stagnant, and they were unable to manufacture any sort of consistent offense. 

Saint Louis University commit Nick Kramer was only able to manufacture 10 points in the game, with 6 of those points coming from the charity stripe, as he finished with just half of his single game average. On top of Kramer’s disappointing night, the Jr. Billikens only made one three-pointer. One of the team’s strengths in the early portion of the season was the deep ball, but it has faltered as of late. 

The Jr. Bills’ offense continued to sputter in the second quarter, and they took a 29-21 deficit into halftime. SLUH played to a close margin in the second half, but they could never close the gap, as they dropped their final regular season contest 58-51. 

“The fight was there,” said senior center Kevin Hogan. “But things didn’t go our way with our execution on offense. 

The biggest offensive force for the Jr. Bills was Walker Jr. who dropped a game-leading 18 points. His performance was supplemented by Hogan’s stellar performance on both ends of the floor: 13 poings, 10 boards, and 5 blocks. 

“Most of my shots were not very difficult since our guards made some really good plays to get me the ball,” Hogan humbly said. 

The Jr. Billikens followed their rough end of the season stretch with a commanding 83-33 win over the 3-19 Fox Warriors. 

SLUH opened up a 27-5 at the end of the first quarter, dominating in the paint and in transition. They held a 47-12 landslide lead heading into the halftime break. 

Kramer scored 15 points and Walker added another 12 to lead the initial force.  

Yet  junior Zach Ortwerth led the way with a standout performance of 18 points, 7 rebounds and 5 steals, most of his production coming in the first half. 

The continued one-sidedness in the second half allowed some of the Jr. Billiken bench players and younger guys to make some contributions to the scorebook and garner some playoff experience.

“We knew going into the game we were going to have to play tough defense, and offensively we knew we were going to have to finish in the paint,” Ortwerth remarked. 

Freshman Landon Pace scored his first six career varsity points, junior Cayman Butler added another six, senior Jack Christanell scored five in his first multi-bucket game of the season, junior Trey “Diesel” Philips contributed four, senior Charlie Stewart connected on a 3-pointer for his lone bucket of the night, and juniors Dwayne Chatman and Cal Kreuter each added two points of their own. 

The reserves were able to close it out, and SLUH advanced to the District semifinals against the fifth-seeded Oakville Tigers, who knocked out the Lindbergh Flyers 55-54 in a nail-biting quarterfinal. 

The one-seeded  Jr. Billikens seemed to enter the game as hefty favorites, but the Tigers made it known early that they were not going to go down without a fight. 

Oakville got out to a scorching hot start, raining in three pointers early. They outpaced, outworked and out-hustled the Jr. Billikens en route to a 17-7 first quarter lead. 

Yet, SLUH remained resilient and locked down on defense, allowing less points in the final three quarters than they did in the first.

Walker led the offensive charge with 20 points and Kramer added another 16, as they were the only Jr. Bills to score more than 7 points, continuing to reign as the main scoring duo for SLUH. 

The defense carried the Junior Bills to victory, as they were able to string together stop after stop en route to their 48-33 win.

The Jr. Billikens will look to carry this spurt of momentum into the Class 6 District 1 final against second-seeded Jackson, winners over third-seeded Poplar Bluff by a score of 70-49, at 3 p.m. on March 5 in the Danis Field House. SLUH will have to execute start to finish to knock off the sharp shooting Jackson team.

“Limiting Jackson’s three-point attempts and limiting them in transition will help lead to a win,” Ortwerth added.