Monroe City’s hot 3-point shooting in first quarter sparks 24-point victory over Palmyra in CCC play

MONROE CITY, Mo. — Monroe City boys basketball coach Brock Edris joked with his team after the fact, but there was no joke about the effort his players put forth against Palmyra on Tuesday.

Following a five-game stretch in which it went 3-2 with wins by a combined seven points against teams with a collective 38-33 record, Monroe City gave Edris good reason to be jovial following a 68-44 Clarence Cannon Conference win over Palmyra at the Monroe City High School gym.

“We’ve struggled the last five games or so,” said Edris, whose team fell out of the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association Class 3 top 10 but is still receiving votes in the state poll. “I teased our guys a little bit. I said, ‘I hope you were saving all that for this game,’ because as a coaching staff, we were pretty frustrated with what we were seeing, and the kids got a good laugh out of that.”

Edris would like a copy-and-paste performance in Monroe City’s final three regular season games and in the Class 3 District 6 tournament that begins on Feb. 24.

“I hope we play like that some more the rest of the season,” Edris said.

Monroe City sophomore forward Wyatt DeGrave could feel such a dominant performance brewing.

“We just came off a rough stretch of games, but we had a great practice yesterday,” DeGrave said. “We’re back and better than ever I feel like.”

Junior guard Quincy Mayfield said Monroe City’s mission was simple.

“We knew we couldn’t give them any hope from the start,” Mayfield said.

A 21-10 first quarter in which DeGrave and Mayfield combined to make five 3-pointers helped them accomplish that mission.

“We were absolutely locked in,” DeGrave said.

DeGrave continued his torrid shooting in the second quarter by draining three more triples.

“I just need to stop thinking about it, and tonight I just didn’t think about it,” DeGrave said. “They just kept leaving me open, and Quincy, Trey (Smyser) and Toby (Sapp), they all just kept finding me.”

When DeGrave finds his groove, Mayfield was hard pressed to think of a better shooter that he has seen.

“There aren’t very many if there are,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield added seven points in the second quarter and capped it off with a buzzer-beating midrange jumper that rattled around every inch of the rim and fell to give Monroe City a 42-23 lead.

“I think going into halftime, that’s when everybody knew we could pull away with it,” Mayfield said. “I’m not really a mid-range guy. I like to think I’m a three-level scorer, but I think that going in really set the tone for the second half.”

Mayfield scored five more points, DeGrave threw down a dunk to reach the 20-point mark and Monroe City (18-4, 4-0 CCC) put the pedal to the metal to extend their lead to 60-29 by the end of the third quarter.

“Everybody was playing with a ton of confidence tonight,” Edris said. “I was pleased with us taking care of the basketball better than we have recently. Defensively, we played much better and made it difficult for Palmyra to score. The overall performance was impressive.”

On the other side, Palmyra sophomore Hudson Bock said Monroe City, which made 14 3-pointers, took advantage of a subpar defensive effort on Palmyra’s part.

“They were hot tonight,” Bock said. “There wasn’t much we could do about it. Our defense was really, really bad.” 

Bock assured the Palmyra faithful that his team’s effort will improve in a potential rematch with Monroe City.

“It’s not going to happen again,” Bock said after Palmyra fell to 17-6 overall and 3-1 CCC. “We’re going to see them again in the district championship game, I promise you that, and it’s going to be different.”