MOUNT VERNON, Mo. — Trailing by 11 points early in the second half in the midst of a Blair Oaks’ 7-2 scoring run, the Mount Vernon girls basketball team was at a crossroads—find consistency on both ends of the floor to flip the momentum and get back into the game, or watch their impressive season end in the Class 4 quarterfinal round on Saturady.
The Mountaineers chose the former, vaulting back into contention behind a 14-2 surge led by a steadfast defensive effort and the dynamic scoring of senior Lacy Stokes, a Missouri Southern commit, to take a one-point lead into the fourth quarter.
Mount Vernon found itself up 46-44 with nine seconds left in a free-for-all fourth quarter with Blair Oaks’ Autumn Bax shooting free throws. Bax made the first charity shot to cut the lead to one but missed the second, with the Falcons grabbing the rebound and missing a followup shot from the baseline. After a scrum, the 50-50 ball found its way into Stokes’ hands, who dribbled in a sprint to the far side of midcourt to run the waning seconds off the clock before being bombarded by teammates as the Mountaineers clinched a 46-45 come-from-behind win over Blair Oaks for a trip to the Class 4 semifinal round.
“It just means everything to me,” Stokes said. “I can’t put into words what it means to be here. We lost my freshman and sophomore years, and we thought we were going to do it my junior year, but we choked it out. We finally have our foot down, pushing all of the momentum in the right direction. Everyone wants it just as much as our three seniors.”
AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR
The win marks the 14th straight for Mountaineers (27-3), who are returning to the Final Four for the first time since 2012. Mount Vernon will battle Vashon (17-1) in the semifinal round at 6 p.m. on March 19 at JQH Arena in Springfield.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” Mount Vernon coach Grant Berendt said about making it to the Final Four. “I have been there as an assistant a few times but never as a head coach. I am super proud of our kids. Since Lacy and Ellie (Johnston) were little kids, they’ve talked about doing this. A lot of them were in the stands watching the 2012 team go all the way and win it. … We broke through this year. We had to claw and scratch to do it, but it is an unbelievable feeling.”
HOME SWEET HOME
The last time Mount Vernon played on its home floor, it clinched a district championship with an 84-23 win over Seneca on March 6. The Mountaineer seniors never anticipated another chance to play in front of the home crowd. Under normal circumstances, quarterfinal games are played at a neutral site, but because of COVID protocols, Mount Vernon girls basketball was able to give the community one of the most meaningful wins ever in the final home game of the 2020-21 season.
“After the district championship, I didn’t think we’d be playing on this floor again,” Stokes said. “When we heard we were hosting a quarterfinal, we thought it was one last go around on this court for the seniors. It was big for us to get to do it. … My favorite thing to do is to put banners on that wall. To get to put as many as I have, I can’t put it into words.”
“It means more than anything because I don’t know if it will ever happen again,” Berendt said when asked about earning this type of win in front of the Mount Vernon faithful. “The one good thing about COVID is we got to host the quarterfinals. That never happens in basketball. To have the home crowd here, for us to be able to come back in this environment, I don’t know if it happens on a neutral floor. For our seniors, to go out with two big wins — a district championship and quarterfinal win — at home. Man, that’s special.”
EXPERIENCED IN ADVERSITY
While most teams might crumble under an 11-point deficit in the second half of a state tournament game, Mount Vernon used very recent experiences to draw from when rallying back against Blair Oaks on Friday. In the sectional round, the Mountaineers trailed Ava by seven points to start the second half before recovering to earn a 53-49 victory.
“If we don’t win like that at Ava, we don’t win today,” Berendt said. “We haven’t faced a lot of second-half deficits in the last month of the season. For us to have one in a big game and get that monkey off our back in the sectional, if we can’t come from behind from something like that, we don’t win this one because we wouldn’t have been there before and our kids wouldn’t have that feeling.”
SCORING LEADERS
Stokes led the way for Mount Vernon with a game-high 19 points, 17 of which game in the second half. Kruger finished in double figures with 10 points, while Ellie Johnston scored eight.
Malorie Fick led Blair Oaks with 18 points, while Bax finished with 10. Bailey Rissmiller scored eight.
HOW THEY GOT THERE
The first shot of the game found nothing but twine on a 3-pointer from Johnston, and after makes from Raegan Boswell and Cameryn Cassity, the Mountaineers held a quick 7-2 lead.
Blair Oaks stormed back to close the quarter with an 11-8 lead behind two 3-pointers from Fick and an inside score from Natalie Heckman.
The Falcons pushed the lead to seven nearly three minutes into the second period after a score on the drive and a transition 3-ball from Fick made the score 18-11.
Mount Vernon whittled the lead down to two, 22-20, after a 9-4 run fueled by the play of Kruger, who had three baskets inside the paint as well as several rebounds and defensive stops.
“I can’t speak enough on our posts,” Stokes said. “It’s all heart for them. Lisa has a huge heart and works her butt off inside. I couldn’t be more thankful to have her on the team this year.”
Rissmiller scored consecutive baskets inside the final minute of the first half to send Blair Oaks into the intermission with a 26-20 lead.
A 7-2 run by the Falcons to open the third quarter put the Mountaineers in a 33-22 hold with 6:12 on the clock.
Stokes hit her stride offensively in the third quarter, kicking off Mount Vernon’s game-changing 14-2 run with a mid-range jumper from the free-throw line. After the first of four turnovers by Blair Oaks, Stokes found Boswell inside for a score to trim the lead to 33-26.
Heckman and Stokes traded two makes from the free-throw line before Johnston knocked down a runner in the paint to cut the lead to 35-30 with 4:30 on the clock. Stokes proceeded to bury back-to-back 3-pointers from the corner to ignite the crowd and give Mount Vernon it’s first lead since early in the first quarter, 36-35, with 2:10 on the clock.
“My confidence was kind of down going into the half,” Stokes said of her play in the first two quarters. “I felt like we were a second-half team all season. So coming out, Coach B lit a fire under our butts in the locker room. We just had to believe. He put that confidence in us to take the shots we did and luckily they went in.”
Stokes added a third 3-ball shortly after and the Mountaineers went into the fourth quarter with a 39-38 advantage.
“That is what you want your senior point guard, a 2000-point scorer, to do in a game like this,” Berendt said about Stokes’ play in the second half. “You want them to put you on their back and get you back into it. It took all of us, but it takes a gutsy kid to make a shot when you have six feet flying at you in the corner.”
The Falcons scored the first four points in the fourth quarter behind a 3-pointer from Fick to regain the lead, but Stokes tied things up at 42-42 again with another 3-ball of her own.
Blair Oaks added a basket inside before Stokes found Kruger in the paint near the five minute mark to tie the game for the final time at 45s. A free throw by Cassity shortly after gave Mount Vernon the lead for good.
“If we don’t have Lisa Kruger in the last two games to battle 6(-foot)-1 against Ava and 6-1 here, we don’t win those games,” Berendt said. “To have a 5-10 kid who is strong and won’t allow a kid to overpower her is huge. huge.”
Stokes added a free throw with 2:47 left to push the lead to 46-44 and that was the last point scored until Bax’s free throw with nine seconds left.
