It took three and a half quarters before any kind of offense showed its face, but the saving grace in the second meeting between William Monroe and Madison County was that it was a fight through and through… and even if the good part of the fight was only four or five minutes of game play long.
The Mountaineer faithful waited an awful long time to get hyped, but when Dalton Taylor knocked down a 3-pointer and then coverted both free throws on a technical foul, it led to a nine point lead that set the crowd on fire. Monroe, which controlled the pace of the game up until that point, found a way to claw back into the game late, but it couldn’t come up with the offense in the last minute to deliver what would have been an impressive comeback, and ultimately an upset with Madison instead prevailing 44-38.
“That’s been the most impressive part of this group — how resilient they’ve been this year,” said Mountaineers coach Ben Breeden. “I think teams wait for us to break sometimes and it hasn’t happened so far and so hopefully this is just our character our makeup, how we’re going to be on any night. Tonight we had a lot of things not going our way and we just hung in and battled.”
If you missed the first three quarters of the game, you didn’t miss much. Granted there were some defensive plays, but the greater part of this matchup was more about missed layups, freethrows and opporunties than anything else. That said, when the Dragons took a 5-point lead in the first quarter, they did the smart thing and stuck with their game plan of slowing the game down, establishing lengthy possessions and keeping Madison from playing in the transition game that was so successful in the first bout between the two.
“I have to give a tremendous amount of credit to the guys for playing great defense and sticking to the gameplan,” said Monroe coach Brett Maynard. “We were able to shut them down or slow them down for three quarters and they’ve got a lot of fire power. Our guys listened and worked as hard as they could”
Little changed in the first three quarters. Monroe led by three points going into the break, going into the fourth quarter, the deficit was the same with the Dragons up 23-20. The pace, much to the delight of both student sections, did increase after that though.
“The whole game it felt like we low on energy but then coach (Breeden) got on us to pick it up and we did something about it in the fourth quarter,” said Madison’s Isiah Smith. “We got together and tried to make things work, things finally clicked.”
Once the lead started changing hands in the fourth, suddenly both teams came to life offensively. When the Dragons tied the game up at 30-30 midway through the fourth on a Kam’ron McCain runner, Madison saw Taylor come up with his biggest shot of the night. His 3-pointer gave Madison the lead by as much, and a Monroe turnover on the other end wound up with officials calling a technical on the Dragons and letting Taylor make it a 5-point Mountaineer lead.
“Coach (Breeden) said the shots would finally come and if they did, to knock them down,” Taylor said. “It did, and I was able to hit it, change the momentum a bit.”
After Dre Twyman and Smith both converted in the paint, it was suddenly 39-30, the largest margin of the game. But Monroe did not go silently. Madison struggled at the free throw line all night, and keeping consistent with a 47 percent foul shooting performance, the Dragons were able to first trim the lead to five, and then to three with just a minute remaining. But that would be as close as Monroe could get as their offensive surge dried up and their rivals were able to put the game on ice at the line.
Three Mountaineers finished in double figures with Taylor and Twyman each scoring 13. Smith added 11. Dylan Breeden finished with six points. Madison scored 20 points in the first three quarters but got 23 of it’s 24 fourth quarter points from Smith, Twyman and Taylor.
For Monroe, McCain finished with 13 points. Anthony Terry had 11 points. Jalen Anderson and Spencer Eldridge each had six points. The Dragons had just two free throws in the first three quarters and eight the entire night.
Monroe will host Central Woodstock on Tuesday at 7:45 p.m. while Madison will travel to face George Mason, also on Tuesday at the same time.
