The East St Louis Flyers & Salem Wildcats won their openers last night at the 70th Salem Invitational Tournament.
The Flyers opened the tournament with a dominant 71-45 win over Champaign Central. Macaleab Rich, who came in averaging 18 points and 10 rebounds per game, scored 12 of his game high 23 in the fourth quarter. University of Missouri commit Christian Jones withstood early foul trouble to finish with 20. Chris Bush led the Maroons with 10. East St Louis improves to 15-4 on the season while Central falls to 2-11.
The Salem Wildcats used an 11-0 run to end the first half turning a 15-15 game into a 26-15 lead and they would hold off Carbondale from that point winning 51-37. Kaleb Anthony led Salem’s offense with 15, Caden Bee added 11 and Rolen Adams finished with 8. Salem is 10-9 on the season as they will get the Flyers in Friday’s championship semifinal at 6:30.
Tonight the other opening round games will be played on WJBD. At 6:30, Effingham takes on Madison, the 4th ranked team in Class 1a followed at 8pm by Mount Vernon and Thornton Fractional North. Those two winners will play in the 2nd semifinal on Friday.
