St. Vincent boys basketball coach Bruce Valleroy always says that Mayor’s Cup games are low scoring. While the numbers do prove him to be correct, his Indians had no problems scoring on Saturday. Both teams scored often to start the night, but St. Vincent eventually pulled away in the second half for a 75-51 victory over Perryville at the Perry Park Center.
It is the highest scoring game for St. Vincent in the 25 years of the series (72 in 2022) and the fifth straight win for the Indians over the Pirates.
“I just proud of our effort,” Valleroy said. “It’s always tough in this environment to shoot and we came out hot and then ramped it up again late,” Valleroy said. “
Both teams started out hot as the teams combined for five three-pointers in the first quarter. St. Vincent sophomore Max Wheeler was the catalyst for St. Vincent with 15 of the Indians 22 points in the quarter. Wheeler ended with 27 points on the night. Perryville stuck close with threes from Waylon Huber and Aiden Wendell, and baskets from Barrett Wheeler and Karston Schilli.
“It’s good that we were able to get off to a start like we did,” Valleroy said. “That always sets the tone, especially in games like this one.”
Both teams cooled off in the second quarter as St. Vincent still led 32-25 at the half.
St. Vincent picked it back up in the second half scoring 43 points in the second half, including 26 in the fourth quarter. St. Vincent made 11 three-pointers in the game.
“Scoring 43 points in any half is big for us,” Valleroy said. “It just keeps us going in the right direction.”
To aid Wheeler’s big day, Jacob Schremp scored 16 points for the Indians and 11 more came from Colden Prost.
It’s a direction that the Indians have been going since the beginning of 2024.
St. Vincent head coach Bruce Valleroy said earlier in the season that he expected a slow start because most of the team was coming from the football playoffs and needed time to gel as a team. He projected that his team would find their groove after the Valle Catholic Tournament. The Indians (11-7) are now 6-1 during the month of January.
“I didn’t want to brag or nothing but, it’s gonna take you a while to get going,” Valleroy said. “I’ve been fortunate over the years, successful football teams, where we started out late, I always picked a point in the season where we were gonna go and take off from them. I thought with this group, they’re very knowledgeable, they really love the game of basketball, I thought it’d take us maybe a month you know to get going maybe a little bit in January. Once we got done with the Christmas tournament at Valle, we really got after and really started to improve. You hate to say it, but we’ve only been together two months, everybody else has been together three. So we’re really getting into the middle of our normal basketball season and we’re really starting to click on all cylinders right now.”
A big reason behind the turnaround has been due to their offense.
“The beginning of the year we didn’t score many points, but it took us a while to shoot the ball get a little better,” Valleroy said. “Our defense has been there for the most part.”
Evan Hayden led the Pirates (2-16) with 12 points, while Karston Schilli and Jake Cissell added 10 points each.
“We didn’t shoot very well after that first quarter,” Perryville coach Justin Dreyer said.
