Defense dictates QND girls basketball team’s ability to control tempo in victory over Monroe City

MONROE CITY, Mo. — Quincy Notre Dame senior guard Sage Stratton could sense the Raiders’ defense was making Monroe City uncomfortable, and that’s just the way she and the Raiders like it.

“That’s always our goal,” Stratton said.

The Raiders held the Panthers to nine first half points and pulled away for a 57-27 victory at the Monroe City High School gym on Saturday.

“Our defense really came out and made them uncomfortable in their early sets,” Raiders coach Eric Orne said. “Even their coach told me that.”

Panthers coach Adam Rung attested to that.

“They’re state-ranked for a reason,” Rung said of the Raiders, who entered the game tied for second in the Associated Press Class 3A state poll. “They’re really good at what they do, and they put a lot of pressure on you and try to make you uncomfortable. We didn’t get off to a very good start, and you can’t do that against a team like that.”

The Raiders scored the first 10 points of the game and never looked back.

“We knew they were a tough, good team, and we wanted to see how fast we could come out and score, and that started on defense,” Stratton said. “We pushed the ball up the floor, got a lot of people scoring in the beginning, and I think we moved the ball great.”

Stratton led the Raiders with 18 points, but three other players — Tristan Pieper, Jenna Durst and Ari Buehler — all scored at least seven points in the first three quarters.

“That’s when our offense is really in tune,” Orne said. “We got a lot of good looks. We trust these kids. It’s not always what Sage can do. It’s where Sage can throw the ball to, get that extra pass in. They believe in each other. When Jenna’s hitting, when Tristan’s playing well, those are all good things. I think we could even get more scoring out of Ari as I plead with her to score more. It’s all good.”

Pieper, who had 14 points, said while the Raiders did not put up gaudy offensive numbers on Saturday, the manner in which they scored their 57 points was more important.

“They play good defense, but we always talk about working for a good shot, so even if we’re not scoring 70, 80 points, but we’re still getting good ball movement, getting good shots, that’s all that really matters,” Pieper said.

Pieper and Durst each scored twice on QND’s first four possessions of the second quarter — Pieper on a pair of layups in the first 40 seconds and Durst on a 3-pointer and a driving layup on the next two possessions — to stretch the Raiders’ lead to 22-6 before a Monroe City timeout with 5:32 left.

“We both got downhill really well,” Pieper said. “The girls were doing really well feeding me in the post.”

Durst said the Raiders’ spacing helped part the seas for those drives to the basket.

“We did a good job of spacing out, and that creates driving lanes,” Durst said. “That can really get us going. It just happened to be me in that small time period, but overall I thought everybody did a good job of getting downhill and taking advantage of the mismatches that we had.”

After Pieper’s layup 35 seconds into the fourth quarter extended QND’s lead to 44-23, the Panthers (13-5) never got closer the rest of the way.

“Our ball movement with our good defense, that’s some of the better basketball we’ve played all year, and we hadn’t been playing that type of basketball that I’ve been wanting to get to,” Orne said. “That’s kind of led to my frustrations in practice. Tonight we were putting things together. We had a couple lulls there, but I thought we looked a lot better tonight.”

The Raiders (24-2) will take on Quincy High School on Tuesday at Blue Devil Gym. The Blue Devils handed the Raiders one of their four regular season losses last season in a 47-24 decision on Jan. 30, 2024.

“They whipped our butts last year, and we have to go in there with more of a mental attitude,” Orne said. “We’re excited about this opportunity. We’re two weeks away from the postseason, and we know we have to dig in.”