Like so many times over the last two seasons, teams are lucky to slow down just one of William Monroe’s big weapons in either Markell Williams or Gary Morris. Manassas Park wasn’t very lucky. The Dragons senior duo put on quite an offensive exhibition in the Bull Run District semifinals in front of their home crowd, coming up big at the end of the third quarter and going into the fourth where the Cougars made their biggest push to get ahead. In the end, the tandem’s combined 62 points was simply too much and Manassas Park’s 3-point shooting cooling off, Monroe was able to enjoy an 81-65 win to advance to the BRD championship on Friday.
“They played a lot of zone (defense) against us but we played well enough against that in the first half to get them out of it,” said Dragons coach Mike Maynard. “We haven’t seen a lot of man-to-man this year and I thought we had a lot of good chemistry there in the third and fourth quarter. Gary got a couple of looks and shot the ball well. Markell was just Markell.
There was no struggle for Monroe offensively and out of the gate the Dragons were able to claim an 8-point lead with Williams providing 10 of his team’s first 15 points. In the second quarter with Williams still rolling, the Dragons expanded the margin with Morris starting to get warm and send Monroe to halftime with a 13-point lead.
“These are my last few times playing at Mitchie Court and I wanted come out and play my game,” Williams said. “(Gary and I) have been doing this since rec league. It’s easy by now to be honest. We just love playing with each other. He’s my brother.”
In the third quarter, Manassas Park’s Nasser Smith and Myles Durr found a way to make things interesting. With Smith’s speed inside and Durr’s 3-point shooting, the Cougars worked Monroe’s lead down to just four points with just over two minutes to go.
“They’re tough and quick,” Maynard said. “We had a lot of trouble keeping those two guards in front of us and (Durr) was hitting NBA three’s.”
Something clicked for the Dragons after that though. With Morris scoring nine of his team’s next twelve points, his team found itself back up by 11 heading into the fourth. Little changed in the fourth with Durr’s 3-point efforts floundering and the Dragons defense limiting Smith. That lead to Monroe building its largest lead of the night, 20 points with just over two minutes to play, and a comfortable finish with its bench finishing off the game.
“The crowd just got electric,” Morris said. “Coach Maynard talked us up. We felt a little pressure. Coach Maynard was a little tight. We just had to keep the team stuck together.”
Morris led all scorers with 35 points. Williams was close behind with 27 points despite playing under the weather. Jeff Early had six points and eight rebounds.
Monroe hosts Clarke County on Friday at home at 7:45. A third consecutive win over the Eagles would guarantee the number one overall seed for the Dragons in the Region B tournament next week. The last meeting between the two ended with a Monroe win in overtime.
