With his team’s fate within the I-55 conference hanging in the balance, St. Vincent boys basketball coach Bruce Valleroy showed his team a message that St. Pius fell to Jefferson R-7, and with a win the Indians would claim the conference championship.
The only problem was that St. Vincent was behind 21-16 at the half.
“What we told them is that all we had to do was win the second half and we would be conference champs,” Valleroy said.
His team answered the call emphatically.
St. Vincent used a huge third quarter and eventually ran away with a 67-44 victory over Grandview on senior night to claim the I-55 conference title, by virtue of St. Vincent owning the tiebreaker with Jefferson.
“It’s always a great feeling to win conference,” Valleroy said. “That’s always one of our goals before the season. It never gets old because this is a new group of kids who have never had this experience. Herculaneum had a lot of guys coming back and Jefferson has really been hot and only lost one game since Christmas, so I’m happy that we played them early in the season.”
Grandview kicked the third quarter off with a three-pointer to go ahead 24-16, but after that it was all Indians.
St. Vincent went on a 25-0 run that turned the game around in the Indians’ favor.
“We picked up the pace and they really don’t like to play that up and down type basketball,” Valleroy said. “That got them out of their gameplan. However, we also started to hit shots more consistently. We didn’t shoot well in the first half, but once we started seeing shots fall everything slowed down.”
The defense also picked up as Grandview turned the ball over 23 times in the game, as St. Vincent outscored the Eagles 54-23 in the second half.
“We played good defense and got a few steals and layups and everything ballooned after that.” Valleroy said.
Blake Monier led the way with 18 points for St. Vincent, while Dylan DeWilde and Grant Abernathy had 12 points apiece. Jacob Schremp added nine points.
Caleb Peterson led Grandview with 14 points.
The game didn’t look like it would turn out as the runaway contest that it did as St. Vincent started slow, leading 10-9 after the first quarter and they scored just six points in the second quarter on a pair of three-pointers from Payton Strattman.
“When we went into the locker room at halftime, I thought everything was in slow motion,” Valleroy said. “We went back to what is probably our bread and butter, which is our press and getting after it. I thought the players who started the second half really responded and those that came off the bench kept it rolling.”
Valleroy noted that while the conference title is one goal, he has his sights on the district title next.
“We are not satisfied with just this,” Valleroy said. “We want to keep this season as long as possible.”
