It's one of the few neighborhood rivalries that comes with its own trophy, and this year the Barry County Brawl hardwood will be staying in Monett after the Cubs, ranked 4th in the state in Class 3,rallied from a 13-point second half deficit to edge Cassville 21-20.
“It’s great,” a smiling Ian Meyer, Monett’s senior quarterback, said after the game. “We won last year and every time I’ve been starter so it’s a great feeling. And it was a good game.”
And it really was, even though Monett fans didn’t think that until late in the third quarter after their team was down 20-7.
Cassville, unranked despite the same 4-1 record as Monett and the same loss (both teams only loss came to five-time Class 2 state champion Lamar), scored on its very first play on offense when running back Kyle Ruark rambled through a gaping hole in the Monett defense for an 83-yard touchdown to make it 6-0 after the Wildcats missed the extra-point.
Monett then tried an unsuccessfull fake punt that came up two-yards-short at its own 28, giving Cassville a short-field to take just four plays and another Ruark touchdown to go ahead 13-0.
“In the first half we didn’t execute,” Meyer said. “They came right out and hit us in the mouth hard. It kinda demoralizes you but we stuck with it, made some adjustments at halftime, and it all worked out.”
Monett actually started to cut into the deficit in the second quarter on an 80-yard drive capped by Meyer’s 27-yard touchdown connection with Brody Crawford to pull the Cubs within 13-7.
And Monett could have tied or taken the lead by the half had star running back Michael Branch not fumbled the ball-away at the Cassville 21-yard line in the final two minutes before intermission.
That allowed Cassville to maintain its lead and add to it at the start of the second half as a 44-yard run by Ruark down inside the Monett 10 led to a touchdown that put the Wildcats ahead 20-7.
“At halftime we talked to our guys about getting a stop, which we didn’t , and they went down and scored,” Monett head coach Derrek Uhl said. “But I felt pretty good because there was a lot of game left to be played. And I knew if we could just get the lead, all the pressure would be back on them.”
And sure enough, they did. Down by 13, the Cubs took four minutes to move steadily downfield with Meyer hitting receiver Brian Parra-Navarro with two key passes. The first landed Monett inside the Cassville 10, and the follow-up eight-yard touchdown toss made the game interesting again at 20-14.
“We changed some blocking schemes and threw-in a couple of different plays that we hadn’t run in the first half, Meyer said of the offense’s second half improvement. “But we just played for each other. It was a matter of trusting each other out there.”
“Ian did a good job of scrambling and making plays,” Uhl said of his quarterback. “And with that I think we tired them out and that opened up our run-game.”
By four-minutes into the fourth quarter, the comeback was completed when a 74-yard Monett drive ended on a fourth-down from the Cassville five-yard-line when Meyer rolled out and found not one, but two receivers wide-open in the end zone. He chose Crawford instead of Parra-Navaro, and that accounted for the deciding touchdown in the Cubs 21-20 victory.
But everyone agreed the hero on the play was not Meyer or the receivers, but Branch, the stand-out running back, who carried out a fake on the play-action pass and got most of the attention from the Cassville defense.
“They respected Mikey and he made a great fake,” Meyer explained. “I rolled out and there was nobody there.”
With that touchdown, Monett got the bragging rights to the Barry County Brawl for another year. But with both teams in the same district (Class 3, District 4) there is a definite chance that these two teams might meet each other again.
But the Cubs definitely learned something about themselves in putting together a classic comeback.
“I think we learned that we’re tougher than we think we are,” Uhl said. “You just have to believe. When we were down 20-7, it was a true test to see who’s gonna fight and who’s gonna keep on playing. And I thought we did a good job of that.”
“We know that no matter what the deficit we’re always still in it,” Meyer added. “We really believe that. Down by 13 points, that’s nothing. Give us four minutes andwe can score two touchdowns. We just trust each other to do things like that.”
