The Indominable Joe Talton

 

Legacy is a word over used in sports, often incorrectly. Webster's take — something received from a predecessor— is far different than today's evolved meaning. Legacy has come to mean a list of awards, records and championships. But those are accomplishments on a résumé. The athlete's imprint on the future is his legacy. When Joe Talton hung up his sneakers in 1967, his legacy began.

Since 1959 the name Talton and winning basketball have been synonymous in the small northeast Missouri town of Monroe City. That September, strapping 14-year-old 6’8” Joe Talton showed up off the farm over in Hunnewell, 7 miles west of Monroe City, in his one size fits all overalls and started busting down barriers and pulling down rims. School friends say his shoulders were so wide he had to turn sideways to enter classrooms, he could hold three apples in one hand, and his handshake would swallow up a forearm. 

His earlier educational journey had been a nomadic adventure, the racial intolerance of the day a driving force of constant change. “I went to the school with white kids in Hunnewell, MO until second grade,” Joe tells me. “Then they put us in an old building for two years with only black kids from Hunnewell. Then I think it was 5^th and 6^th grade they bussed over to Monroe for a couple of years to go to school with other black kids from a bunch of towns. We had a little old broken-down bus and an old man named Thomas who drove us each day. Back and forth. Then in 7^th grade they sent us back to school in Hunnewell with the white kids.”

Why all the changes, I ask? “Don’t know,” says Joe. “We just went where they told us to.”

In 7^th grade, Talton took up the sport of basketball and it would change his life. It was a Spartan beginning.

His dad worked as a hired hand on a farm just outside town, but Joe Talton's family of seven lived-in a three-room house in Hunnewell. Mike Crain was a junior high classmate of Talton. “Joe lived across the street from the school,” Crain says. “On Saturday morning he and I would play ball on their outdoor court. (Our) school had no indoor gym. We just had an outdoor playground with a hoop. We practiced in Monroe High on Saturday during the season. The rest of the time in winter we were outside to practice, we scooped snow so we could play.”

When Joe returned to the Hunnewell school as a 6'8 7th grader, teacher Dale Purdy took one look and decided to start a basketball team. "Dale loved basketball," says Crain, "and played some when he was in the Army. Hunnewell had a high school until 1950 when they consolidated with Monroe. Dale said, 'dig out the old uniforms.' We had one leather basketball. Teams came from all over the area to play pickup games on Sunday, all ages of boys, on our outdoor court. That is how Joe got his start. I remember what a good dribbler he was. Mr. Purdy would have three of us surround Joe and try to take the ball away with little success. That is how Joe got his skills, Mr. Purdy making him work on fundamentals."

When Talton started high school at Monroe City, he was the basketball talk of the area. The legend of Joe Talton was born. The school had been integrated only five years prior to his arrival. His black skin made him even more of a novelty than his intimidating size and raw basketball skills. For four winters in the racially turbulent early 1960’s, Big Joe Talton dominated the area courts and paved the way for generations of future Black basketball stars at Monroe City High School, many named Talton.

Joe Talton didn’t ask for the role of racial trailblazer but fate and timing of the desegregation of the area schools made him a curiosity wherever the Panthers played.

Thirty-five years ago, when I came to Monroe City to coach the basketball team, the old timers told me of a great player from long ago named Joe Talton. The stories rang with a Paul Bunyon mystique of mystery. He had not lived in Monroe for over a quarter century. The picture painted to me was of a very physical young man with an angry side who struck fear in the heart of friend and foe alike. Even today, most everyone in Monroe City has heard of Joe Talton, but few know him, and many are surprised to learn he is still alive.

“I grew up hearing all those same stories, that Joe was a man hard to get to know,” says current Panther Assistant Coach Ed Talton. “He would be my second cousin.” Ed's late dad, Cliff, and Joe's late dad, Leroy, were brothers. "But I had never met Joe. He never came home," says Ed.

But when they finally met, Ed didn’t see such truculence in the son of his father’s brother.

1959 Hunnewell JH

“They say he was so good at times his play would scare people,” Ed recalls. “I didn't meet him until about 15 years ago when he came back to Monroe for a class reunion, and they announced his class at one of our home basketball games. I went up and talked to him and he was a super nice guy and it seemed like most of his classmates were happy to see him. He said he had been gone for a long time and no one around here had seen him for years. He said he just decided it was time to come back. He was in good physical shape back then, but he's had a lot of health problems the last few years. He called me, kind of out of the blue last week and told me his twin brother George had just passed away. He also said he has lost one leg to diabetes and might lose the other.”

Joe today lives down in Columbia, 70 miles southwest of Monroe City. He will soon turn 79 years of age. Ed Talton says he is proud of Joe and how he set the table for all who followed. "And I told him that last time we talked," shares Ed.

I was able to reach Joe Talton on his cell phone. We had a Sunday evening conversation that lasted over an hour. 

"Listen," he finally interrupts me, "Let's talk again another day. I am getting tired. I had my leg taken off not far back. Got to get up early tomorrow and going back to see the same guy that got this one. They might want to take the other, but if they do, I will still call you back. Promise. I might be scooting around on my ass, but I will call you back." 

I had heard that back in the day, Big Joe was a man of grit. He still is. He called back the next day assuring me that his remaining three appendages were still firmly attached.

He was very enthusiastic and willing to talk about his upbringing in Hunnewell, MO and his playing days at Monroe City High School. One old classmate, who has recently reconnected to Talton, told me Joe was a hustler. Keep that in mind when you talk to him, I was warned. Anyone who has spent a lifetime hustling is at ease around people and Joe was easy to talk to.

Joe Talton does not understand why anyone would have found him intimidating. “I am a big guy but only on the court did I use my size to get my way, only on the court, man,” he says. “Guys would step on my feet, that was a common trick back then, kick me in the shins. I didn't get mad; I just gave it back. I let everyone know right away that the lane was mine. You want to come in, you had better be ready for the 'bow, I did like to throw an elbow now and then,” he says with a high-pitched laugh.

Big Joe fondly and immodestly recalls his skills set as a player. “Some guys are big, and they make them play basketball. But I was a basketball player who just happened to be big. Can you see the difference? Then there was my twin brother George. He really didn’t want to play but since he was big (6’6”) he had to play or people would always be on him, ‘why you not playing as big as you are.’ George was mostly all four years on the B team. George didn't care. He just liked riding the bus to the games. I played on the A team all four years. I worked hard on my shooting. On my dribbling. I stayed in shape. I wanted to be good. If I had been 5’8 instead of 6’8, I would have still played and been good, people just would not be saying today they were afraid of me.”

To challenge Joe Talton was to motivate him. Madison High had a player taller than Joe. "Got tired of hearing about him," Talton says today. The two met in the Shelbina Tournament. Talton scored 50 points and cut his own forehead on the rim. MC won 75-43. Talton outscored not only his taller foe but the entire Madison team. Big Joe did not mince pre-game words with his adversary. "I told him that when I went to dunk he'd better get out of my way, or I would dunk his head right before the ball," he says with a laugh. "I was big, so I was a target, but nothing direct(ly) racial, anywhere we played. It was different back then. Blacks and Whites playing together was new to everybody and sometimes people just didn't (know) what to say."

The rims in area gyms needed to fear the wrath of Joe Talton. "I only shattered two backboards because back in my day we didn’t have many glass backboards, they were metal, or I would have got me a bunch. I don't know how many rims I bent," he says. “But I did bring down some, bent more. Back then guys didn’t jump like they do now, but I did. Boys around Monroe played on the second floor. I jumped up to the fourth. Did that scare people? If you say so, OK, but that is just how I played.”

“My Coach, Red Sylvarya, he was great to me. We both came to Monroe the same year. He always made me stay on top of my schoolwork. He would make sure my brother George and I had everything that we needed. We really had no problems between Whites and Blacks, not at least that I ever saw. We got along good on the basketball teams. We were all teammates, and we went to places as a team all the time. No problems.”

For many rural kids in the 1950's and 1960's, transportation to and from school was a major roadblock to participation in athletics and other after school activities. There was no school bus to bring them home after practice. Talton remembers the kindness that was shown to him by one of his classmates. 

"Jimmy Delashmutt was in my class and we became very good friends from almost the first day that I went to school in Monroe,” remembers Joe. “If we had practice on Saturday either his mom or dad would come out and pick my brother and I up and take us in (to Monroe) for practice and then would take us home after practice. It was about 10 miles each way. If we had a game on a school night, they would have us over to their house after school and we'd have dinner with them before going to the game. They didn’t have to do those things. They were just good people.”

Jim Delashmutt didn’t directly aid the Panthers on the floor - although transporting and feeding the team's star player was a major non-playing contribution, one could argue. “Oh no, heavens no,” laughs Joe Talton when asked what position his friend played. “Little guy and kind of fat, he was the team manager.” Delashmutt is still remembered in MC for his fun-loving nature. When he swept the floor at halftime and with the pep band playing as he saw to his custodial duties, he would dance along to the music.

If not for those types of kindness, Joe says, he never would have had the opportunity to play basketball or to go to college. “Jim and I stayed real good friends the rest of his life, like brothers,” says Talton. “He settled in Kansas City and worked for the electric company. He just passed away in the past year. It really hit me hard when he passed. And now my brother George is gone. Those were my two best friends.”

J.R. Chisom ran the point guard position for the last two years of Talton's Panther career. "He was just so strong," says Chisom. "He was 6'8" but he also weighed, I bet, 250 pounds - and it was all muscle. Joe never lifted a weight in his life. We didn't keep rebounding stats back then, but Joe had to get 20 most nights. Also, our coaches' style was to walk the ball up the floor. We did very little pressing and very seldom would we fast break. If we had played a faster pace, who knows what kind of stats Joe would have put up."

The four years that Talton led the fortunes of the Panther basketballers, 1960-1963, were highly successful. Monroe City compiled an 82 and 21 record and won four consecutive conference championships. They also won the prestigious 16 team Monroe City Tournament three of Talton’s four years. They were upset by Paris during his senior year and Talton has not forgotten the cause. “Bad officiating,” he told me, “They just wouldn't let me play that night and they didn’t beat us, the refs did, because Paris would have never stopped me.”

After graduation in the spring of 1963, Talton became the first black athlete to play at Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar MO. “I had four really good years down there.” he tells me. “People treated me good. I had some offers from bigger schools, but my high school coach told me a smaller school would be better for me and he was right.”

When Talton started play for the Bearcats in the fall of 1963, SWB competed as a two-year junior college. After his sophomore year, the school transitioned to four-year competition and joined the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics). “I could have left after two years,” Talton says, “but I just had it too good there.”

In the Junior College Regional Championship game in March 1964, Joe Talton led Southwest Baptist to a titanic upset of national power Moberly Junior College and its future Hall of Fame and NBA championship coach, Cotton Fitzsimmons. Joe dominated the glass grabbing 18 rebounds as SWB advanced to the national tournament in Hutchinson, KS. Fitzsimmons noted that Talton averaged 20 points and 19 rebounds per game and lamented on how he had allowed the superstar from Monroe City, only 40 miles away, to be recruited away from right under the coaches' nose. 

Talton was named JUCO All-American both years he played on the Junior College level. 

Talton said he had always dreamed of playing professional basketball. “But to be honest,” he says today, “I just didn't work hard enough. It was too easy for me playing against the boys I played against in high school and college,” saying he wasn’t challenged enough by small school competition.  “I had a try out in Kansas City for the pros, but it didn't go real well. Nobody to blame but myself,” he says without further explanation.

Hunnewell School Today

He was set to student teach at Monroe City in the fall of 1967 but at the last minute changed his mind and joined the Army. “I never did go back (to Southwest Baptist) and graduate. That is something I still regret. But I was just tired of school. I was going to get drafted anyway, so it was better to go ahead and enlist. I wanted to be a cook and by enlisting it guaranteed me that job and training. I spent a year and a half in Vietnam. They told me that being a cook I'd be safe. But man, we were right up there on the front line. Lots of shooting and rockets and such. I guess they have to eat up there as well. I was in Da Nang, right on the Hahn River and when I was there in '67 and '68, things were really hot. But I got home okay. I played a little bit of basketball when I was in the Army and after I got home, some in a men's league in Macon, but not a whole lot. I pretty well knew by then my playing days were done.”

Talton became a family man during his senior year of high school. “I got married and we had a baby,” he shares with me. “Sure, we were too young, but I had responsibilities and I wanted to meet them. I told Southwest Baptist I can't come, ‘I'm gonna be a dad.’ They said ‘we'll take care of you.’ And they did. I stayed married all four years I was in college and there were people that helped me out with money that I could send home.” When I asked for further details of the financial arrangements, he deferred saying, “let's just leave it at that.”

Talton spent his adult life working in a number of factories in Missouri, Iowa and Indiana. "I was big and strong and work for me was not hard to find. Drove a truck some too," Talton says. He and his wife are today living their retirement years contently, he says.

Today Talton is happily remarried and said he's very proud of his three children: a 59-year-old son, a 51-year-old daughter and a 40-year-old daughter. 

"None of my kids really got into playing sports," Talton says. "But my older brother Ronald had a boy who was pretty good. What was his name? Boy went by his mommy's name. Her and my brother didn't get along." 

Talton calls to his wife, "What was the name of that boy of Ronald's who played basketball?" Cecil Estes, I hear her say. Cecil Estes? In 1984 Cecil Estes, from Columbia, MO Hickman High was one of the top high school recruits in the nation. He spent one year at Mizzou and in a game against North Carolina, according to the Columbia Tribune, in a head-to-head dual played circles around Michael Jordan. Estes couldn't break away from the homeboys over at Douglas Park. He was dead before he was forty. "Yeah, that was him," says Talton. "Said he was a good player." 

Joe Talton still dreams of basketball successes he never had. “I did ok for a kid from Hunnewell, I guess. But I really wanted to play pro ball, it's all I ever really wanted to do. I still think about it all the time.” 

Joe Talton, whose larger-than-life presence on a basketball court once sent shivers through entire opposing teams, is an old man now of 79, recently having lost one leg and two best friends. 

The Godfather of the Monroe City basketball dynasty asks me, “You say my cousin Cliff has some grandbabies who are good players?" I list for him their names and accomplishments. “You tell them I will be watching,” says Big Joe Talton, whose legacy has paved their way.

.

Thoughts after the Monroe v Centralia Game

Basketball is a game of percentages. 

I try, but I sometimes fail, to not talk to Coach Edris as a fellow (former) coach. It is not the purpose of my current project. But I did tell him after the Centralia game I have noted that his team almost always gets the last shot of a quarter and I found that impressive. He acknowledged it is something he stresses with his team. 

With no shot clock in high school basketball, it just makes sense. To successfully execute this strategy will result in four extra possessions a game and four extra possessions will win a lot of close games. 

We always had the “24 Second Rule.” If we had our hands on the ball with 24 or less seconds left in a quarter, we would get the last shot. We would run the clock down to 10 seconds and then go into a predetermined set play. The play would be designed to get a shot up with four seconds on the clock; time for a follow up rebound but not enough time for the opponent to advance the ball to the other end of the court for a shot. And we would practice this scenario over and over and over. 

Nothing will swing momentum of a game faster than a basket to end the quarter and an easy basket off a set play to start the next quarter. Against Centralia, MC scored at the end of the first quarter, the second quarter and the third quarter. With such a big lead, to end the game the Bench Buddies dribbled out the clock. 

To start the second half the Panthers ran one of their favorite set plays against a zone: a lob to Josh Talton for a dunk off a baseline zone back pick. After the five-point swing you could feel the collective will of the large Centralia homecoming crowd literally sucked from the gym.

On the journey to five consecutive district titles the Panthers have earned a reputation as a team that wins the big close game. That does not just happen. It is the cause and effect of understanding percentages and executing the strategies to exploit them to your favor.

Side note: it was the Coach's 200 win as the Panthers' head coach.

You Learn to Smile While Your Lip is Bleeding

 

Every student at Monroe City, MO High School should know the story of Washington School.

Until the fall of 1965, Howard Pruitt attended the Washington School for Monroe City “Colored” children. “I started school at Washington in 1958 and went through the 6th grade. Then I moved over to the White school.” 

Washington School

The landmark Supreme Court decision of 1954, Brown v Topeka Board of Education made segregated schools based on race unconstitutional. Pruitt entered the 7th grade, for the first time sitting in a classroom next to white students, 11 years after Brown v Board.

Pruitt, Class of 1971, would in his senior year Captain the integrated Monroe City football team. Today, he is retired from the University of Missouri and has lived in Columbia, MO since 1979. He stays busy, as he approaches his 70th year, working three days a week as a life coach through the federal program Job Point. He is also the driving force behind the Washington School Alumni Association. “Too many have no idea that there ever was a Washington School. It is part of who we are. It needs to be remembered,” he says. The Alumni Association allows Pruitt to honor an institution he loved. "We need this," he says. 

Washington School was a flower grown from poisonous soil—the segregation laws of 20th-century America. "People need to know that it was the law back then," says Pruitt. "A lot of good people back then didn't question Jim Crow." 

And a lot of good people today do not want to be reminded. 

The Monroe City Public School District began providing high school level education for its Black students in 1938. As required by the State law of the day, Black and White students were taught in separate buildings. Beginning in 1948, MC Black high school aged students were bussed to the all-Black Douglas High School in Hannibal, MO. In 1955, the Hannibal Public Schools made the decision to abide by the Brown v Board ruling and completely integrate its schools, thus closing Douglas High. 

Many districts in Missouri ignored and/or challenged the Brown v Board ruling in court. Monroe City chose a hybrid path. The high school was integrated, as the law required, but the district’s Black elementary students were still, until 1965, segregated at Washington.

In 1956, Monroe City High School graduated its first Black students, four in total. Donald Scott was one. He played on the varsity basketball team. He became the first in his family to graduate from college. He earned his degree in 1960 from Lincoln University and joined the US Army. Thirty-one years later he retired with the rank of Brigadier General. 

Upon retiring from active duty in 1992, Scott served as the chief operating officer and chief of staff for the mayor of Atlanta. He later became the founding director and chief executive officer of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Corp. He was in 1997 appointed by President Bill Clinton to the role of the Deputy Librarian of Congress. He retired for good in 2006.

Howard Pruitt

What a story of a man who teed it up during a difficult era, against odds that few of us can ever know! I am sure he endured painful slights I can only imagine. But, more than most of us, he cherished the nation, his nation, that in his youth so dishonored him. Yet in the end he chose a life to serve America. 

I taught in Monroe City for five years and never heard the story of Donald Scott.

Black children’s lives all too often become a cliché of criminal pathology: absentee father, mother struggling with mental health issues and drug addiction, no food in the fridge, neighborhoods of casual violence, "a spiderweb capable of ensnaring the most innocent.”

Pruitt says Monroe City was different. “This was a good place to grow up. When we integrated, sure we had our share of knuckleheads who didn’t want us there, would do the drive-by insults. But we got things straight, in time. They learned we would only take so much. A lot of people were good to us. I remember our junior high principal, Mr. Minor, that first year went well out of his way to make us feel welcome, to check on us, see how we were doing. We loved our football coach, Coach Welker. Not one teacher in all the years I was in the White school treated me unfairly because of my skin (color)."

Donald Scott

Still there were some social taboos in small town 1970 America that were steadfast, contact limits that were not to be traversed. "So, we didn’t push things," says Pruitt. "When I was captain of the football team, it was a tradition at homecoming that the captain, when the homecoming queen was announced at halftime, he would give her a kiss. I just gave her a hug.”

Like in many small towns in the 1960’s, athletics played a key role in successfully integrating Monroe City High School. Pruitt says with noticeable pride that the 1969 Panther football team started multiple Blacks on defense, sometimes as many as nine. They spent the summer before their senior year preparing, did enough pushups to power a steam engine. They were ready. “We came within one game of playing for state.”

Once Black athletes were allowed to compete on the same playing field, Jim Crow was doomed. The 1957 Little Rock, AR Central football team was still an all-White squad and the pride of the White segregated community. In the throes of a 35-game winning streak that spanned parts of four seasons, the Tigers finished the 1957 season with a 12-0 record. Little Rock Central was named by the Sporting News as the best high school football team in the nation. They outscored their opponents by a whopping 444-64 margin. 

But the winds of change were now blowing - destined to soon reach gale force levels. Legendary Little Rock Central coach Wilson Matthews was gruff and crude, but also perceptive and pragmatic; he had glimpsed the future. Soon, he'd told his all-White team, "There'll be Black boys here so tall they can stand flat-footed and piss in a wagon bed, and you White boys won't even be team managers."

Within five years of the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, the football team was by majority Black.

The names of the diverse Panther stars of the hardwood today are Talton, White, Robertson, Countrymen, Holland, and Campbell. Thirty years ago, in my day, they were named Jackson, Minter, Talton, Holland, Robinson, White, Washington, Stark and Holiday. Would it not seem logical that there were others before them, Monroe City young men of color who could run just as fast and jump just as high, but were never allowed to play based on the color of their skin? 

“I am sure there were,” says Pruitt, “but we will never know their names. I bet there were some pretty fierce tackle football games during recess at Washington school.”

But that was, and still is, the essence of Monroe City's ignored “Colored” school; the nameless faces of a school without even a yearbook to record their mere existence. They were neighbors and boyfriends and sons and nephews, and they had dads and moms and sisters and brothers and teachers and that special girl, and the link that bonded them still pulsates through the heart and in the blood of now aging alums like Howard Pruitt. 

We Caucasian baby boomers, bless our pastoral soul, are quick to offer a tidy and reassuring narrative to distance the pure evil of Jim Crow. It's a tale that reflects how we like to think of our current selves, as a society forever progressive if not yet perfect, and we conveniently conjure up ennobling roles for whites as well as blacks. It serves the purpose of validating our self-righteous indignation - but not much else.

For it ignores one undeniable fact - color it as we might, there will always be pain at the heart of the story of those who endured Jim Crow.  You learn to smile while your lip is bleeding. 

It is good a generous man such as Mr. Pruitt is able to keep the burning spirit of Washington School alive. He is of a generation of our African American neighbors who had the bad luck to be born too soon and, therefore, in many ways, Washington School has faded away, largely unappreciated. It doesn't have to be that way. We all share in the blame that it is. 

DAN MUDD AND THE 1962 HR TROJANS

The town has changed. The game has changed. Almost everything has changed really. When Dan Mudd played basketball at Holy Rosary High School in Monroe City, MO the gym ceiling hung at 14 feet above the well-worn floor and had sizzling steam radiators on a wall under each goal. Forget about any shot farther out than 10 feet unless you banked a laser off the metal backboard. And a hard drive to the basket without the ability to stop on a dime ended with a scorched butt.

When he returned to work at the school in 1959, a new gym had been built, one good enough to host a Regional Tournament. Mudd coached the basketball team, the baseball team, taught history and hygiene, and he made $300.33 a month. He held the job until the spring of 1966 when the school unexpectedly closed its doors.

What is the same is a now 85-year-old man who has remained not only true to his town and his profession but also to himself and his family, a consistency of character shaped by a burning ambition to lead young athletes. If you will listen close you can still hear it in his words. 

I had not spoken to Coach Mudd in almost 25 years.

“Doubt I have much that can be of any help to you,” Coach Mudd said upon greetings, “but let’s see what we can do.” We talked for over two hours.  

Until 1966, the Trojans of the Monroe City Catholic Church Holy Rosary fielded their own high school team, one with long and rich traditions. Many, now aging alumni keep the pride alive. The team Purple and Gold can trace their basketball playing roots as far back as the public school. In 1926, Monsignor E. Connolly led the first recorded edition of the Trojans.

Connolly, a native of Ireland, became a legend in his own right, arriving to open the school in 1919 and leading the parish for 55 years. In 1966, when the final graduating class marched out into the real world, the school had handed out its last of 668 diplomas.

Connolly left and indomitable mark on many Monroe City youngsters. One was Dan Mudd.

“Father Connelly was a man who just loved athletics,” Coach Mudd states, “If you would go over and check the trophy case in the old school, you will find pictures of him coaching football at Holy Rosary at what had to be back in the 1920s. I remember he was also a great golfer. He was the kind of guy that a young boy looks up to, turns into a hero.”

Seventy-five years later Mudd still recalls vividly the first time the Priest showed an interest in him - and it changed the trajectory of his life. “When I was in 5th grade,” Mudd recently shared with me, “My brother bought me a baseball glove for my birthday. We were out in the open field at recess and Fr. Connelly had a fungo bat,” Mudd remembers. “And I had my new glove. He said, ‘get out there in the field and let's see if you can catch a flyball.’ I was hooked after that. I knew I wanted to be a coach and I knew I wanted to be a teacher, just like Father Connolly.”

The Trojan basketball legacy is a shroud of myths. Such as the Archbishop himself decreed, after a fight during a Sunday afternoon game in the fall of 1959, that Holy Rosary and McCooey Catholic of Hannibal would no longer play. Or veteran official Bill Leaser barely escaped with his life from a charging Coach Ozzie Osborn after swallowing his whistle as Charles Kendrick was mugged on a layup as the buzzer sounded to end a one-point 1958 Regional Championship overtime loss to Madison, who would finish second in the Class S state tournament. Or Fr. Connolly was personal friends with Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. In 1925 the Trojans’ sent their star player, Lowell “Red” Hagan to South Bend to play for the Rock. In 1927 in a hotel room the night before the Fighting Irish tangled with the Iowa Hawkeyes, Fr. Connolly showed Rockne a trick play he had designed called the Flipper. Rockne used the play the next day and it became a staple of his playbook. He also took credit for designing it. Today the trickery is known as the widely used “flea flicker.” Or so the story goes.

Mudd would graduate from Holy Rosary with the class of 1955. After earning his teaching degree at Northeast Missouri State College in nearby Kirksville, Mudd became, in 1959, a trailblazer of sorts. “I was the first lay teacher ever hired by the school,” Mudd recalls, using a term for a teacher not belonging to a religious order; neither a nun or a priest. “There was a man in town named Maurice Ritter, we didn't have a school board. But he was kind of the guy in the Parish that oversaw the school. Holy Rosary had never had a teacher contract before. All the teachers had always been nuns and they didn't need contracts. Mr. Ritter went over to Mr. (Galen) Lankford, the Superintendent of the Monroe City public schools, and got one of their contracts. They crossed out Monroe City at the top and put in Holy Rosary. Filled in the amount $3601 and I signed it. That was the summer of 1959.” Mudd lived next door to the school.

In 1962, Coach Mudd and HR would produce the best one season record in school history, finishing 29-4. The team was led by John Thomas, the school’s career total points record holder with a total of 1,936.

“We had some really good teams at Holy Rosary,” Mudd states, “but my best team, by a whisker, was 1962. That was John Thomas’ senior year. I hope this doesn't make anybody mad, but John was the best player Holy Rosary ever had. He was the school's all-time leading scorer.”

Father Connolly

Mudd recalls a fortuitus break in the summer of 1961 that helped stack even more talent at the small school. “The year before there had been a high school over at Indian Creek called St. Stephens. They closed and we had several of their boys move in. We were going to have a good team anyway, but they made us even better. And I remember there was a big commotion over whether they would be eligible or not. Eventually, the State Association said they were.”

A total of seven boys transferred from Indian Creek to Holy Rosary. Five played on the basketball team. For a school that finished the 1961 school year with only 17 boys enrolled, the St. Stephens additions were a windfall for HR.

The 1962 team was dominated by a strong senior class made even deeper by the Indian Creek additions. “I averaged 26 points a game my junior year,” stated John Thomas. “My senior year it was down to 21. We had a lot more help.”

For Holy Rosary coach Dan Mudd the buildup was pure torture, like something devised by the Marquis de Sade to fill time while his whips were at the cleaners. "That morning and afternoon were just really a long day," Mudd recalls. The countdown to that evening's 1962 Regional championship boys' basketball game was on.

Territorial proximity, the two schools were 15 miles apart. High stakes, the winner would be crowned Regional champs. Neither had ever won a Regional. Hard feelings, an on-court fight two years prior had forced the two to cease scheduling regular season games. Bragging rights, many supporters were related by marriage and/or worked together. They had to live with the outcome every day.

In the late winter of 1962 Holy Rosary High School of Monroe City, MO and McCooey Catholic High School of Hannibal, MO could check all the above "big game" boxes. 

1962 HR Trojans

But first, some background for perspective. 

Hoppy Van Marter is a proud 1959 grad of Holy Rosary High School. He is to this day a self-described basketball junkie. 

"So, name the best team Holy Rosary team ever put on the court," I asked Hoppy? I had been told Hoppy, who has lived in Columbia, MO since 1980, knows his basketball and he will not hesitate to tell you, his thoughts. He does not disappoint. “The 1962 team was the best, although you had to love the grit and the fight of the ‘58 team. They (1958) were just a bunch of tough farm boys who did not back down from anyone. They came so close, the loss to Madison was just heart breaking (a one-point Regional final overtime loss), but that is what makes high school basketball so great. And that game was played at Holy Rosary.”

Van Marter, continued, “What made the 62 team better was John Thomas. The 58 team did not have one player they could go to like John when they needed a big play. The only Regional we ever won was by the 62 team and that has to weigh in on any discussion of who was better. But they were both good in their own ways. If we had scored two more points against Madison, that would probably tip it to the 58 team. Two points. That is how even these two teams were.”

The 1962 team thrived under Coach Dan Mudd's low key demeanor. "Those guys (1962) were not as intense, not just as players but also just overall as guys, as the 58 team was," says Van Marter. "That bunch in 58 would have been a handful for a young coach like Dan," says Hoppy. "Coach Osborn was just right for those guys, what they needed," Van Marter says in describing Mudd's more violate, colorful but still highly successful predecessor, Coach Ozzie Osborn. According to Hoppy, Mudd and Osborn were polar coaching opposites. 

But for the 1962 team, Mudd's unassuming ways fit like a glove. Instead of intimidation, Mudd utilized a quiet and steady emphasis on what Holy Rosary stood for, the core beliefs of the church. Hard work. Fairness. Humility. Basketball must be fun or why play? And winning is fun. Mudd’s teams won because he prepared them to do so, not due to a momentary hysterical reaction. He never berated the officials and would not allow his players to do it, either. 

“Coach Mudd had standards and he enforced those, in a quiet way, his way, but you knew you had to live up to those standards,” says 1966 grad John A. Hayes, who starred for the final edition of the Holy Rosary Trojans. "I would not call him a disciplinarian, at all. Maybe sometimes we needed a little more of what the older guys will tell you Coach Osborn (Mudd's predecessor) had - a temper. But that was not his (Mudd) way. It would not have worked. Coach Mudd succeeded because of what he didn’t say as much as what he did say. He never overcoach us and he wasn’t much for speeches, so when he did talk, we knew it was important—and we listened."

The Trojans opened the 1961-62 season with a 68 to 44 win at Bethel. In a harbinger of good times to come, John Thomas led the team with 24 points, and Mike Maher followed with 15. In late November, Coach Mudd’s squad showed that they were a team to be reckoned with in the area as they knocked off a highly regard Philadelphia club, coached by Monroe City native J.L, Burditt, 58-43. Jim Buckman led the team with 21 points and John Thomas followed with 19.

In late November the Trojans cruised to a championship trophy in the Leonard tournament. They survived a stalling strategy in the first round against Clarence, 26-17. Leonard fell in the semifinals 59-30. Philadelphia came up on the short end in the championship tilt 74-56. In the championship game, Jim Buckman led a balanced Trojan attack with 20 points. John Thomas contributed 19, Bill Campbell 13, Tom Hagen 11, and Mike Maher 9. Holy Rosary held a commanding 40 to 27 halftime lead.

On November 30th Holy Rosary opened Salt River Conference play on the road with a big 69 to 67 victory over Paris. The Coyote's had entered the season as the conference favorite. Paris returned three starters from a team that had won 25 games and finished fourth in the state in 1961. Paris was led by a young Coach Donnie Williams, a man who would spend over three decades leading both Paris boys' and girls’ hardwood fortunes.  “We had a lot of good games with Coach Williams,” Mudd recalls. “He was just a fine person and a good example for the whole area. When we beat his team early in the 62 season, we knew we were going to have a good team.”

John Thomas recalls that the first Paris win as a shot in the arm confidence builder for a young team with a young coach. “They had a player named James McBride who could jump out of the gym,” Thomas remembers. “He was ahead of his time, you didn’t see kids around here, in those days, playing above the rim. But he could really jump. My hook shot was pretty good. People don’t use that shot anymore but it was a good shot to get off against a taller opponent or one who could jump (high). You used your body to keep the defender away and give yourself room to shoot. I scored early in the game with a hook over McBride and back running down the floor he told me, ‘Try it again, Thomas, and I am going to knocked it out of the gym.’ A couple of possessions later I was on the right side, and I started my move for a hook shot. McBride took the bait. When I faked the hook, he skyed so high, I swear, he never has come down, still up in those rafters somewhere.” Thomas recalls with a hearty laugh. 

With his opponent McBride hopelessly hoovering high above, Thomas took two short dribbles and laid the ball in the basket. McBride went on to a stellar career at Moberly Junior College playing for future NBA coach Cotton Fitzsimmons. 

The Paris win moved the team's overall record to 7-0. Tom Buckman led the Trojans with 21 points.

The team first tasted defeat the second week in December with a disappointing semifinal loss to Hannibal McCooey Catholic in the Monroe City tournament. Two months later the Trojan's would in a big way balance the ledger with McCooey. 

Holy Rosary bounced back to claim the third-place trophy while McCooey for the only time in history claimed top honors in the state's oldest tournament.

1962 McCooey Shamrocks

The last game before the Christmas break saw the purple and gold travel to Ewing to notch a road win by a score of 69 to 48. Buckman and Thomas were the team’s leading scorers with 25 and 18 points respectfully. The boys finished the 1961 calendar year with a record of 10-1.

After the holiday break, Holy Rosary would claim another tournament championship, the first-place trophy for the Community Tournament. In the championship game Holy Rosary knocked off Frankford 68 to 67. Both Jim Buckman and John Thomas, according to the Monroe City News, were named to the "All-Star" Boys team. Thomas led the tournament in scoring with 61 points.

At the end of January, in a critical Salt River Conference rematch, this time at home, the Trojan’s again knocked off Paris, for a Homecoming 68-58 win. John Thomas ripped the nets for 26 points to raise the team’s overall mark to 17-1. Mary Ann Hays was named Homecoming Queen. It would be Paris' only two conference losses of the season. HR would finish the season with a conference mark of 10-0.

The Trojans suffered their second setback of the season in the middle of February when they fell to Frankford in a shootout 97-87. In late February Holy Rosary again came up short against Frankford, this time by the score of 73-67. They would not lose again until the state quarterfinals.

"They (Frankford) just seemed to have our number, for some reason," remembers Mudd. "Both games we lost were close, but the bounces just went their way, I guess." 

The Trojan’s entered the Class S regional tournament as the number one seed, ahead of Frankford, despite losing two of three games to Frankford. The tournament was held at Atlanta. Holy Rosary blew out Leonard in the opening round and knocked off the fourth seeded host Atlanta in the semifinals, to set up a championship bout with the Trojans’ longtime nemesis, Hannibal-McCooey.

To this day, Thomas remembers the significance of the Regional Tournament seedings. “We were seated first, and Frankford was seated second which meant they had to play a very good McCooey team in the semifinals. There were three teams in the Regional pretty even and by being seeded first, we only had to play one of them. That was important. We had beaten Frankford in the finals of the Community tournament, but they had beaten us twice in regular season scheduled games. But McCooey, who was seated 3rd, knocked off Frankford (in the semifinals). We really wanted to play McCooey in the finals. A couple of years before, there had been the fight and it was decided by the adults that it would be best if we just didn't play each other anymore. The rivalry had become that intense.” 

But now, there was no avoiding a showdown with a Regional title to the victor.

"McCooey had two boys who were brothers, and their name was Hanson," Coach Mudd says. "They were good players, and they were from Frankford but went to school at McCooey. Their dad was a well-known doctor in Frankford. I remember they really played well that night. I bet they were really motivated to be playing against their hometown team and maybe that is why they played so well, but whatever the reason, I am glad they did because we really wanted to play McCooey and not Frankford."

“It seems over the years,” Coach Mudd today reminisces, “McCooey was always in our way. We played them in some big games over the years. Just being McCooey alone made it a big game, but it sems they were always an opponent in a big game - the Monroe City Tournament, the McCooey Christmas Tournament, the Regional Tournament - and it seems like most of the time we would come up short.” But not on what Mudd remembers as a warm winter night in 1962.

Holy Rosary fell behind early but roared back with a big second quarter, outscoring McCooey 20-12 to take a 36-28 half time lead. “I remember how loud the gym was that night and how nervous I was the whole game. Even after it was over, I just could not settle down,” recalls Coach Mudd.

His squad maintained their lead in the 3rd quarter, starting the 4th stanza on top 58-51. “It was just back and forth all night," remembers Mudd. “Each point was a battle, that night, we would have died for each basket. They stayed close but I don't think they ever took the lead from us in the fourth quarter. We got some big steals and some easy layups off of them late in the game and that helped us pull away. It was a lot closer game than the final score makes it appear."

Time froze, says Thomas. "When we had the lead in the last minute, I swear, it seemed like time stood still, the seconds just would not tick off the scoreboard."

Led by Thomas’ 29 points and 23 from his steady running mate, Buckman, the Trojan’s finally hoisted a Regional Championship trophy after a hard fought 71-61 win. Mudd would call it “right up there as the biggest and most satisfying,” win in his seven years of leading Holy Rosary hoops fortunes.

The Trojans would lose in the state round of 16 to the small northwest MO town of Eagleville, whose star player was Jerry Armstrong.  It would conclude the best season in the history of the school, a 29-4 masterpiece topped off with an undefeated conference title.

Armstrong would go on to fame as the only white player to play regularly for Texas Western University, the team who pulled off the 1966 NCAA final four epic upset of the crumbling pillar of Jim Crow segregated college athletics: the all-white Kentucky Wildcats and their Coach Adolph Rupp. Ironically, Armstrong, the team’s sixth man, played in every game that year except the final when Coach Bear Haskins made no subs during the game, playing his five black starters all 40 minutes. The story of that trailblazing team would be made into the bestselling movie, “Glory Road,” and Armstrong’s character had a front and center role. Both 1962 Holy Rosary All-Stater John Thomas and Armstrong spent many years as Missouri public-school administrators.

“After we won the Regional,” Mudd says, “We had to win two games at Pershing Arena on the campus at Kirksville of Northeast Missouri State. That would have gotten us to the state tournament. The first game we beat a team name, Elmer. Most people have never heard of that little town, and they haven't had a school for years. Two days later we had to play Eagleville.”

According to the Monroe City News on the way to Kirksville for the game with Elmer the Trojans had an escort of 18 vehicles filled with loyal local fans. When the team arrived at Pershing Arena, Coach Mudd sat his troops down and read to them over 50 telegrams he had received from the area wishing the team well. "That was the type of community support we had," says Mudd. 

The game with Elmer was close. Holy Rosary led 24-23 at the half and the game was tied 35-35 after three quarters. The Trojans pulled away in the 4th quarter for a 50-43 triumph. Thomas and Buckman each tallied 16 points.

Jerry Armstrong

Even today his former players recall Mudd as a coach with a dedicated work ethic. Details were everything to him. But, in 1962, Mudd says, he over did it. “If I had one thing to do over at Holy Rosary it would be this: “I got a bus the day between the two games at Kirksville and loaded the team on it and drove back to Kirksville to practice on their floor. I had cleared a time with the coach there at the college. They had glass backboards, which was kind of unusual in that day and I wanted our kids to get a little more experience shooting on them. When we got to Kirksville, somebody had complained to the State Activities Association, that practicing there gave us an unfair advantage, and the people running the gym in Kirksville said we couldn't practice. I called over to Quincy College and talked to their coach. They had glass backboards and he said, ‘sure, bring them on over here.’ So, I put the kids back on the bus and drove all the way to Quincy from Kirksville to practice and then drove back to Monroe City. This was all on a very cold and snowy day and our old bus had no heat except for a small blower by the driver. You could see your breath while riding on it most winter nights. It was not an easy trip. To this day, I regret doing that. I really think I wore our boys out.”

The quarterfinal with Eagleville (North Harrison) was never close. The Shamrocks led after one period 24-7. Jerry Armstrong scored 20 of his game high 35 points in the first half, staking his team to a commanding 40-18 intermission lead. The final score was 71-49. Buckman led HR with 16 points. Thomas added 13 and Bill Campbell chipped in with 11. Bradleyville would defeat Eagleville the following week in the state finals, 59-49.

Four years later Mudd no longer had a team to coach as in the winter of 1966 it was announced on a Thursday afternoon that at the end of the current term, the school would be closing. “We really didn't see the closing coming,” said Mudd of the gut shot blow to the close-knit school and community. “The decision was made on the archdiocese level down in Jefferson City. And the people of Holy Rosary were never really given an opportunity to save the school or a choice in the matter. I remember when we made the announcement to the kids, there were just tears everywhere. Everyone was very upset. I remember one of the nuns said, ‘We will live in a tent if we need to, we'll do whatever we need to do to keep this school open.’ That's the kind of spirit that Holy Rosary High School had.”

Mudd's seven year coaching record at Holy Rosary was 123-67. In Mudd's first season, 1960, Tommy Buckman set the school single game scoring mark with a 50-point explosion.  Mudd's only losing season as the school's final head coach was the 1963 rebuilding team that finished with a mark of 10-17. The freshman from that season comprised the leaders on the Trojan's final team, 1966 and they that year won 22 games. The first game of Mudd's HR coaching career came in October 1959, when the Trojans routed Augusta 65-33. The record book closed on Dan Mudd and the Holy Rosary Trojans when they lost the Regional third place game in February 1966 to Providence of St. Louis (an all-black catholic school) by a score of 78-66.

In the summer of 1966 Mudd was hired by the Monroe City Public Schools and spent the next 31 years coaching junior high sports and serving as the school’s junior high athletic director.

Mudd recently celebrated his 85th birthday. His current life, he admits, has been challenging. “There are times when life can be hard and right now for me it is. Both of my sons have passed away,” he shares while not trying to hide the sadness in his voice. 

Fatherhood is forever and forever, by the Grace of God, can be the blink of an eye. People say losing a child is the worst. It's like forced membership to a club you don't want to belong to--and you're in it for life. To hear the anguish in Coach's voice, after all these years, took my breath. But that is the way life is, for certain as we age. It can make one shiver.

"Our youngest, Greg, had some health problems but his death caught us unprepared," said Coach Mudd. His oldest son, Pat, passed away this past fall. His death was more prolonged but no less devastating for Mudd and his wife who are still blessed, he says, with two grandchildren and a great grandchild.

“And my wife Sue has some health issues, and I don’t like to leave her alone for long,” Mudd says. "We both retired in 1997. Sue started teaching in 1959 over in Illinois and did that for a few years. Even after we married, she drove over to Payson each day for two years. She taught Physical Education. Then when she got a chance to teach over here, she switched over to Art. Between us we have over 70 years of teaching the kids of Monroe City. She has been my bride for 61 years.”

“This town has always been our home and we have a lot of help here and we are fortunate we can still live at home,” states Mudd.

What he misses most Mudd says is watching the youth of the only hometown he has ever known play sports. “I probably have not been to a football or basketball game in the last five years. Until then, I never missed.”

Mudd literally lives for his pre-dawn morning exercise routine that is built around a thirty-minute bike ride. “I fear if I ever missed a day I wouldn’t start again. So, I ride every day, even if I must force myself, some days. But I know if I am still riding, I am still living.”

Here is a man who at age 11 knew he wanted to be a coach. “I had a great career at Monroe City” he today humbly states. “But the years at Holy Rosary were also special. I guess in some ways I had the best of both worlds. I was a Trojan and then I was a Panther. And as I get older, I treasure both. David, do you know how lucky that makes me? Kids in this town have been good for me. I hope I have been good for them.” 

Safe bet, Coach, safe bet.

CATCHING UP WITH THE PORTERS

Thoughts after the Monroe City vs. Fr. Tolton game.

High school basketball has changed. The cool kids are leaving the nerds scrambling for the crumbs of their largesse.  That once in a lifetime championship team of random local kids you remember have been displaced by an elite layer of all-star clubs posing as private schools who swear they don’t recruit athletes but just were lucky enough to have hired a coach who knew a few kids on his nationally ranked AAU team who could carpool with him, so they tagged along. And don’t look for this new breed of coach to be teaching in a classroom or monitoring the cafeteria. Many don’t even have a teaching degree.

These instant power houses, not harnessed by district boundaries, are cash generating machines with cable sports networks and athletic attire companies fighting within to foot the bill with gear provided gratis. They can be found in every corner of America—and their itinerary will often have games scheduled in every corner of America. 

Father Tolton, a small catholic high school in Columbia, MO, who has only fielded a varsity basketball team for slightly over a decade, has mightily climbed into the ranks of the state’s elites. Father Tolton is a Class 4 school, one classification larger than Monroe City and will surely challenge for state honors come March. 

Call Father Tolton the (power)house the Porters built.

Michael Porter, Jr and his brother Jontay, in 2016, led The Tolton Trailblazers to the Class 2 Missouri state title. The older Porter was considered the nation’s top player in his class. His brother, a year younger, was also considered a 5-star recruit. Both stood 6’9. That summer (2016) their father, Michael Porter, Sr., was hired as an assistant coach at the University of Washington. His only previous college coaching experience had been as an assistant for the University of Missouri’s women’s team where his two daughters Bri and Cierra were star players, and his sister-in-law was the head coach. 

After his father was hired at Washington, Michael Jr. committed to the University of Washington and along with his brother transferred to Nathan Hale High School in Seattle for his senior year. 

As a senior, Porter, Jr. averaged 36.2 points and 13.6 rebounds a game as Nathan Hale High recorded a perfect 29–0 record and won the Washington Class 3A State Championship.  After hoisting another state championship trophy, Porter was later that spring named MVP at the McDonald's All-American Game. 

Also, that spring, after Lorenzo Romar was fired as Washington's head coach and he needed a new job, Porter Sr. decided to test the market and was hired as an assistant coach for the University of Missouri, back in Columbia where only 12 months prior his sons had led Tolton to the state title. Porter Jr. then decommitted from Washington and along with his brother returned to Columbia and signed to play with his father’s newest employer, the University of Missouri’s men’s basketball team. His brother, Jontay, instead of returning to Tolton for his senior season and winning a third straight state title (been there, done that) decided to skip his last year of high school and go straight to college ball and not surprisingly chose to join his brother and his dad with the Mizzou program.

Porter, Sr, for a man with only one year of assistant experience as a men’s basketball coach must be a fine negotiator. Despite a resume short on foundation, Missouri made him the highest paid assistant coach in the history of men’s college basketball by giving him a salary that topped that of the University’s President, a guaranteed $1,125,000. He and sons could now carpool to practice, if they so wanted to. 

Both brothers spent one unfulfilling injury plagued year, the 2017-18 season, at Mizzou before departing for the NBA. In the fall of 2017, due to the presence of the trio, heady talk was of the Tigers having snared the top recruiting class in the nation and of an on the horizon national championship. Today, in what would have been the brother’s senior season, their dad is no longer on the Tiger’s coaching staff (he was in attendance at the MC game) and Missouri is buried at number 138 in the RPI rankings, one slot behind Stony Brook University. Neither Mizzou or  Stony Brook are considered threats for this year's Final Four.

The 2022 Trailblazers hoops edition is led by the two youngest of the gold standard family off Mid Missouri basketball. To be fair the youngest two siblings do not rival their two older brothers. But Senior Jevon Porter is 6’9 and Junior Izaak is 6’3.  Jevon has signed for next year with mid-major Pepperdine University, coached now by his dad’s former boss at Washington, Lorenzo Romar.  Izaak will most likely end up playing subdivision 1 level college basketball if he plays at all. By all accounts, all eight Porter siblings are not only outstanding athletes, but academically solid and of strong moral character. They certainly make for formidable opponents for a small school like Monroe City. 

But, for now, forget about the Porters on the night Tolton traveled to Monroe City.

Aaron Rowe is a 5’11 freshman. He plays point guard for the Trailblazers and maybe weighs 140 pounds, soaking wet. He looks to be about 12 years old. I had heard he was a very good player, perhaps one of the top 100 freshmen in the nation. Yes, Aaron Rowe is very good. If there are 99 better, I would like to see them. I am not sure who the young man carpools to school with, maybe the coach? If so, gas money well spent. 

Against Monroe City Rowe scored 17 of his team’s first 21 points. In the same span, the Porter brothers combined totaled one two-point field goal. Rowe's 16th and 17th points were a statement - perhaps the most monstrous and jaw dropping ever dunk in a gymnasium that has seen its share of rim rattlers. After hitting a deep three-point shot, with a hand in his face to extend his team's lead to seven points with just under four minutes left in the first half, Rowe stole a pass just inside of center court, took three hard dribbles to the rim and tomahawked a dunk that left the mostly packed gymnasium of Panther fans in stunned silence. For all practical purposes, the game was over. 

Young Mr. Rowe is poised and polished beyond his years. He spent the last minute of the game resting on the end of the bench signing autographs for newfound fans.

Rowe finished the game with 22 points. He looked little in the second half to try to score. He is extremely quick off the dribble and is a deadly outside shooter as he nailed four of five three-point attempts. Tahki Chavez is s a 6’3 senior. He is unsung amongst his more polished teammates, but he is the glue man who holds his team together. He is Tolton’s top defender. He harassed MC’s Josh Talton into his poorest shooting game of the season, as the normally accurate Panther senior made only four of 13 shots. Talton did lead his team with 13 points. Jayden Robinson contributed 12. 

The Porter brothers were held in check. Izack had 7 points and Javon 6. Javon did have 13 rebounds. Justin Boyer is a 6’5 role player but he plays a very important role. He only took five shots and hit three. He is the team’s zone buster, when needed. This night he was not needed.

Monroe City trailed 32-18 at the half and were outplayed badly in the third period while being outscored 15-8.  The final score was 59-41. It was the lowest scoring output of the season for MC. Their shooting was off much of the night but attribute the visitors "stick like fly paper" man to man defense. The Panthers shot a season low 31% from the field and were successful on only three of 17 shots behind the arc.

MC Assistant coach Ed Talton after the game stood outside the team's locker room and gave words of encouragement and high fives as the dejected players departed for home. “We knew this was going to be tough,” Talton said. “And they sure were. We just didn't have an answer for Rowe tonight. He really makes a difference; he really makes them go.”

Assistant coach Rick Baker said the game plan was to try to slow down Father Tolton. “But we don't want to hold the ball either,” he said. “We're not going to get better like that. If we're going to schedule these people, we need to play them. And challenge us. We did tonight, but we just didn't have any answers.”

“We just need to put this one behind us,” said Talton. “We're not going to see anybody like that in the postseason. We've got to remember that. We are going to learn from this. We just need now to move on.”