By Eric Stock and Greg Halbleib
PEORIA – Bloomington High School’s boys basketball team still has two more games to play this season, but after hurdling a 42-year-old barrier, coach Micheal Mosley feels his team has relieved some of the pressure.
“I got on the bus and I thought I felt like I had been in a prize fight because just the burden of this season, but now we are over that,” Mosley said. “We want to enjoy the moment, we want to enjoy state, but we want to win.
“We didn’t come this far to not give ourselves a good shot.”
BHS makes its first appearance in the boys state basketball tournament since 1975 when the Purple Raiders face Oak Park Fenwick in the Class 3A semifinals at 11 a.m. Friday at Carver Arena in Peoria.
Mosley said the sectional championship win over Washington and the supersectional victory over Marengo have battle-tested the No. 4-ranked Purple Raiders.
“We continued to maintain control the game and control the lead and stay within our comfort zone to the point where we had to pull them out to guard us rather than forcing them to make us do things,” Mosely said. “We were comfortable with that.”
Mosley said he sees many similarities between his Purple Raiders and Fenwick.
“They are athletic, they are long and they have some really strong veteran players at every position,” Mosley said. “They will attack you.”
Oak Park Fenwick will be making its first state finals appearance. Friars coach Rick Malnati said his team has some unfinished business after his team bowed out in the sectional finals last season.
“We thought we had one of the best if not the best team in the state,” Malnati said. “I think they have a bad taste in their mouths from that. They want a chance to prove themselves.”
Oak Park Fenwick made headlines last fall when its football team sued after an official’s error cost the Friars a chance to play for a state championship. Malnati said three of his players, including quarterback Jacob Keller, were on that team and will be playing with a chip on their shoulder.
“I think that’s OK, but you have to have a little more vision than playing with a chip on their shoulder, we’ve got to play with the fact that we have to play confident, we have to play together,” Malnati said.
WJBC will have the game starting with a pregame at 10:45 a.m.
Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].
