The Mountain Grove Panthers dominated play against the Cabool Bulldogs Friday night to earn their second straight South Central Association Conference title with a 77-48 win.
“Back-to-back and undefeated (in the SCA), I’m awful proud of these kids,” said Panthers coach Duane Hiler. “That’s a credit to them and their hard work. They just come in with a lunch pail and a hard hat every day and go to work. I’m happy for them and happy it could pay off like this.”
The Panthers were led by senior D.J. McNew, who put up 26 points on the night.
“McNew was player of the year in the conference last year, and should be this year,” said Coach Hiler. “He shows up and works hard every night.”
Mountain Grove opened the contest with a 10-2 run, but the Bulldogs answered with a scoring drive and trailed by one late in the quarter, 15-14. The Panthers ended the first quarter with a narrow lead, 22-18.
Grove maintained their slim lead in the top of the second, then blew the game open and never looked back. The host team held the Bulldogs to five points in the second and added 22 of their own to lead 44-23 at the half. The Panthers led by 30 to close the third, and the Bulldogs continued to struggle against the Mountain Grove defense in the final frame.
Senior Tanner Barnes was the second leading scorer overall with 19 points.
“Barnes is a heck of an athlete, and he’s a great kid,” said Panthers coach Duane Hiler. “Brad does a great job over there with his kids. I just thought defensively we did the things we had to do to win the ball game. Defense turns into offense. We didn’t shoot it real well early, but then we got back the second half and started to attack the basket a little bit, and that made all the difference.”
“We do everything as a team and don’t do a lot of individual stuff,” he added. “I couldn’t be any prouder of these kids.”
Cabool coach Brad Shockley said that his team has been playing really well, but struggled tonight.
“I thought we came out and looked like we were ready to play, and they picked up the defensive intensity and we didn’t respond very well,” said Coach Shockley. “Tanner Barnes was the only one we had doing anything offensively. Against a team like Grove, someone else has to step up and make some shots, and they just didn’t.”
Cabool begins district play at Laquey next week, while the Panthers are the top seed in their own tournament.
Mountain Grove scoring: D.J. McNew, 26; Thomas Clifton, 10; Brock Coffman, 9; Cade Coffman, 8; Carter Otwell, 9; Treye Collins, 6; Haydn Marah, 4; Gavin Veach, 2; Dylan Massey, 2; Hayden Newberry, 1.
Cabool scoring: Tanner Barnes, 19; Caleb Manning, 8; Jonathan Smith, 7; Dylan Medley, 4; Duncan Green, 4; Bailey Williams, 2; Logan Stillwell, 2; Colton Hensley, 2.
