At times, Monticello was in chaos Tuesday night. Coach Kareem Martin was pulling players out of the game left and right early in the third because of execution problems. Then the fouls started piling up on the Mustangs’ big men.
It was an awful lot of adversity for a young team against an unbeaten opponent.
Monticello was up to the task.
Behind a renewed rebounding effort led by Matt Hunt, Tyler Moneymaker and Aaron Stinnie, Monticello managed to hold off a second half charge by Fluvanna and grab a 71-67 victory to hand the Flucos their first loss of the season.
“When you have such a young group, they’re going to make a lot of mental mistakes,” Martin said. “But they played hard and if we continue to grow we’re going to be okay.”
Monticello withstood a 31-point outing by Fluvanna’s YaYa Anderson, controlling the rest of Fluvanna’s scorers with nobody else on the roster reaching double digits.
“There’s no plan against YaYa — he’s going to score his points regardless of whether you play him man-to-man, box-and-one or whatever,” Martin said. “Our plan was not to let the others beat us and that’s what we did.”
The trio of Hunt, Stinnie and Moneymaker combined for 22 rebounds, with Hunt logging eight, Stinnie pulling down seven and Moneymaker grabbing seven. Moneymaker had four of his five defensive boards in the second half including a couple of critical boards down the stretch.
“I think that’s the most rebounds we’ve gotten in a game, I think the next highest is like 15,” Moneymaker said. “That led to us winning.”
The Mustangs have struggled on the boards in the early going, including an outing against Albemarle where Monticello surrendered around 20 offensive boards to the Patriots.
Moneymaker hit a big early bucket on a putback in overtime, but fouled out midway through the extra period, joining Hunt and Stinnie on the bench as that tandem picked up their fifth fouls in the fourth quarter. That left the load on Monticello guards Jhalil Mosley and Denzel Terry and junior swingman Kevin Archer in the closing minutes as Monticello clung to a narrow lead in overtime. Terry and Mosley buried foul shots during the extra time, with Terry going 6-for-6 at the line in overtime while Mosley scored four points. All the while, Fluvanna continued to struggle at the line, where they missed 17 free throws on the night, going 3-for-8 in overtime at the charity stripe.
“I’ve told them all along if we don’t make free throws we’re going to lose close games and we didn’t make free throws tonight,” said Fluvanna coach Munro Rateau.
Archer handled the brunt of the scoring for Monticello with a team-high 19 points for the game. Terry and Mosley finished in double figures with 13 and 10 points respectively while James Banks chipped in eight, doing most of his damage in the first quarter.
Fluvanna (9-1) didn’t lead until less than two minutes were left in the third quarter after a strong charge out of the locker room put Monticello on its heels. But the game see-sawed from there, with both teams trading buckets in the fourth quarter. Anderson tied the game with a putback and free throw in the closing seconds, but the Flucos couldn’t score on the final possession of regulation and Moneymaker squashed any shot at a second chance bucket with a rebound as time expired.
“They’re offensive rebounding tonight killed us,” Rateau said. “Every time they missed a shot somebody got it and stuck it back in the basket and that comes back to energy.”
The Flucos appeared to be in position to take control when a T.J. Dudley bucket with just under two minutes left in overtime gave Fluvanna a one-point edge. But Archer buried two free-throws shortly thereafter and Monticello never relinquished the slim margin.
Fluvanna will try and bounce back at home against Western Albemarle Friday while Monticello is slated to take on Louisa County in a game that may be moved to Thursday.
