Ryan Mahan of the State Journal-Register joins Patrick to talk about Glenwood's appearance in the Final Four Thursday night.
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So Glenwood last night falls in the semi-state semifinals, the final four in Class 3A over at the State Farm Center in Springfield. 39-25 against DePaul College Prep. That's right, 39-25.

Pleased to welcome Ryan Mahan from the State Journal Register. He was up late in Champaign for that game last night. Ryan, good morning. Good morning. Yeah, I didn't even get to bed until 3 a.m., got home Springfield at 2 a.m., but on the bright side, I didn't see an eclipse last night, so that was pretty cool. At least you got something. So I had the Illinois game on before the Glenwood game, and they scored 200 points in the game.

in that game. And then the first quarter score of this DePaul-Glenwood game is 5-5. Just ugly from the start. And you know, I

It's what Glenwood wants to do. They want to be able to control the pace. Todd Blakeman said that he thought that his team was controlling the pace. Glenwood did everything that they wanted to do except for making shots and turning the ball over. They committed nine first half turnovers. They shot the ball poorly, especially in the first half. There were tons of rebounds, and Glenwood got a lot of them, but Glenwood just didn't.

get the ball to go through that net. They went from the six minute 23 point of the second quarter until like 2-11, 2-13 left in the third quarter without a field goal or something crazy like that. You don't win games like that.

No, and it was funny. So during the press conference, the DePaul coach, Tom Kleinschmidt, said that the first half of basketball set the game of basketball back 100 years. And you know what? If you look at the crowd that was there, and I love basketball, but he's not totally wrong.

How was the crowd? I mean, obviously the students had a pretty good showing, but it sounded and at least looked like from what I saw that not a huge level of interest in these Thursday games. Is that a tournament format problem? Is that a calendar problem? I don't know what they even announced the attendance yesterday, but it certainly didn't seem great.

The IHSA doesn't usually announce the attendance. They stopped doing that during the Peoria days because the attendance has just kind of fallen off. There are people who blame it on the four-class system.

There's people who blame it on too many Chicago schools because Chicago teams just don't travel. Maybe we'd have better attendance if it was held closer to Chicago. But last night's crowd was the worst crowd I've seen for state tournament basketball. And, you know, it's an awesome arena. State Farm, Sutter and Champaign. You know, it's iconic. You see that floor on TV. You know, it's a place to be. I don't know what...

to make it more interesting. I really don't, unless you just have games on Fridays and Saturdays and just skip third place games, which, you know, there's, there's very little interest in third place games as is. So, or go back to two weekends and,

and have it just on Fridays and Saturdays. Or maybe you can, if you go without the third place games, you just do it on Saturdays. So people only have to drive one day and it kind of sucks. Like, okay, you go to state, but now you only get a one day trip out of it. Okay. I understand there's, there's, there's no perfect answer, but something needs to be done because that crowd was bad last night and understandable that we were running an hour late, but that did not,

That wasn't the cause of such a pathetic crowd last night. Well, and the one-day trip, I mean, it used to be that way not that long ago when they played the Elite Eight on Friday. So, you know, you would drive in on Friday, play your Elite Eight game, and either you'd advance to Saturday or you'd lose and you'd go home. So it's not like a one-day trip is that out of the norm. I think the other thing is,

And I'll admit, I have not spent a lot of time watching high school basketball this year. We had a baby. There's been politics. I'm a busy boy, okay? So I haven't spent a lot of time in high school gyms. Watching that game last night, a little bit of the St. Patrick-Brother Rice game before it, there needs to be a shot clock. Absolutely. There absolutely needs to be a shot clock. And, you know, I was surprised to know, Alexander, after they lost in the sectional semifinals to Mount Zion,

Cause it was a bad game too. Or as far as like from an interest of a fan standpoint, then Neil said, I can't wait for the shot clock to get here. And that kind of took me off guard. Cause you know, Lincoln's always been notorious for being able to hold the ball for a minute, minute and a half, two minutes at a time. Um,

And they like low scoring games. So it surprised me when Neil said that, but he's looking at it from a defensive point because it's a whole lot easier to play lockdown defense for 40 seconds over two minutes.

So on Glenwood, they end up scoring 25 points, certainly better than five after the first quarter, and some really, really tough shooting. Pretty good defense from DePaul, but it was just ice cold the entire game. Certainly they were disappointed after the game. What was the reaction you got from players and coaches afterwards?

You know, the players, like you would imagine, they had, you know, several of them had tears in their eyes or their eyes were red where you could tell they were very emotional. But, you know, they're going to look back on this in a couple weeks, in a couple months, in a couple years, in 20 years, and remember a lot of more positives than negatives. I mean, it was just one of those games. Ball did not fall through the net. They had nine first-half turnovers. Like I said, I mean, it was just –

But they did a lot of the things right. Like if you would have told them that they would have done X, Y, and Z correctly, they would have liked their chances. And you know what? They were up 7-5 in the second quarter. And if they just didn't go ice cold, they're right there in it. I mean, they hit back-to-back threes with under two minutes left in the game to kind of pull with an eight. But at that point, it felt like –

31 points for DePaul at the time might have been enough, and it turned out that it was correct. And certainly DePaul, I mean, they're clearly the favorite to win this thing, right? You know what? I really liked what I saw from Brother Rice. But I think DePaul is a very adaptable team. They've got different types of players. I think they've got different multiple styles in their bag.

I, you know, so, but I liked brother rice. I really did. I thought they were probably yesterday. I thought they were the best team. And there, I mean, they're pretty traditional basketball power too. So it's, it's certainly not a, not a surprise. That should be a really good game on Saturday. So, uh, just before we let you go, Ryan may hand from the SGR. Uh,

Obviously, you've been following Glenwood through the season. This has been kind of a really nice run for them with a lot of close games, a lot of nail biters, a lot of fun, you know, in these last couple of weeks. Reflections on their run to the Final Four, and obviously there's the third-place game later today, which the kissing your sister sort of analogy plays there. But the...

Just some reflections for me on what we saw out of them this season or these last few weeks. Cam Appenzeller is an amazing athlete. Any sport that has a ball, you could throw it at him and he could pick it up very quickly. I mean, he is just...

a unique kind of talent. Obviously baseball is his best sport. He's really good at golf. You know, he's, he's, he's really good, but this team had length and it had toughness and it had kids like Jonathan Helm. What I like about this, this guy is even when he's, he's,

about himself or whatever. He's very serious, but not in a, not in a standoffish way or anything like that. He's just, he takes his craft seriously. Those guys take what they do very seriously. I enjoyed the time I spent around all those young men this year, but I enjoyed basketball season as a whole. I love basketball athletes. I think even the worst ones do a thousand things more than I can ever do.

How many weeks to football season? I don't want to think about it. All right. Ryan May and from the state journal register, Ryan has been covering the, the, the Glenwood Glenwood through the playoffs and, and the state tournament into the final four last night and doing a wonderful job as always. Ryan, appreciate the time. Thanks for getting up with us after a late night. And we'll talk to you again soon. I'm going to go get three more hours of sleep. You do that. My friend, we'll talk to you soon.