Engulfed in despondency, it was not supposed to end this way. This was to be a team of destiny. But Providence shrugged and “The Dream” was shattered.
Coach Brock Edris and the Monroe City Panthers, since a sectional round loss in March 2019, had tamed March Madness with two thrill packed dream runs to the enchanted land of the state tournament Final Four. And they did it both years with a roster dominated by underclassman.
For two post-seasons, game after game, one shining moment after another, the MC gang confidently rolled through every March playoff obstacle as they climbed up the playoff rung. Most impressively, was the way they did it: impeccable preparation with a focus on the most minute of details, highlighted by a hardnosed brand of old fashion basketball that placed a premium on unity - sharing the ball, guarding like maniacs, and always having each other’s back.
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| Courtesy Muddy River News |
A high school basketball season is always an audacious journey. To reach a state final four requires a 12 long weeks push that follows a trail attached to a slippery slope. Despite endless possible pitfalls, each of the past two years that Panthers had come together, emerging—as final four teams always seem to do—through trial, torment, talent and, mostly of course, sheer will. And with a few fortuitous bounces of the ball along the way.
In 2020, in a race to get to the state tournament before Covid-19 turned the world upside down, the Panthers traveled to Kansas City for a state Class 3 quarterfinal match up and upset a street savvy bunch from KC Central High. Nursing a one-point lead, in as hostile of an environment one could find this side of the Roman Coliseum, Sophomore Josh Talton stole a pass intended for a Blue Eagle opponent primed and cocked to knock down a game winning last second buzzer beating shot. Panther Coach Brock Edris called it the most excited and dramatic moment in his career, as either a player or a coach. For this sophomore dominated team, it was off to a state final four appearance for a program who had not been in such rarified air in 25 years.
In 2021, the state quarterfinal game was played before a Covid limited crowd in the Monroe City gymnasium. Under normal circumstances a state quarterfinal game would be played on a neutral floor. There was nothing normal about Covid. No doubt, the Panthers got a break by having the game played on their home floor.
The opponent was the heavily favorite private school power from the Metro St. Louis area, the O’Fallon Christian Eagles. Edris said his team, based solely on talent, “didn’t even belong in the same gym,” with an urban program not bound by any enrollment area limits and who had soundly knocked his Panthers out of the 2018 sectional round of state play.
With 3:40 remaining in the 4th quarter, Christian held a 48-42 lead. With 1:21 left, Josh Talton converted two free throws, giving Monroe City its first lead, 49-48, since early in the game.
With the score tied at 49 and seven ticks left on the scoreboard clock, Monroe City called timeout to set up the last play of the game. Josh Talton drove hard to the rim but was fouled with two seconds remaining. However, it was only Christian's 5th foul of the half and the ball was put in by MC from it's own baseline. Panther Jaedyn Robertson was a secondary choice on the play but he managed to catch the ball and shoot it one motion. He was fouled on the shot with 1.1 seconds left to play. The Junior, who earlier in the year had come precariously close to being dismissed from the team, never changing expression. Robertson, not a particularly good free throw shooter, strutted to the free throw line, literally ripped the ball out of the official’s hands and without hesitation nailed both free throws. Edris said before his very eyes that night he watched the wayward child grow up. Cool story. A now junior dominated team was for the second year in a row back on the road to the state final four.
This group had for two years refused to genuflect before its elders. Team leader Josh Talton told me this past November, “Every time someone says we can’t, we can.” All that was left to punctuate a storied career was come March a net draped around his neck and confetti in the air.
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| Courtesy Muddy River News |
One disastrous tipped rebound and numerous missed what should have been easy put back shots throughout the game doomed a team that, all year long, had managed to dodge potential disaster, always finding the needed offensive basket, the needed defensive stop, and always at the most opportune times. All year, this seemed a team of destiny. A club with four starters returning from a squad who the previous March had taken second place in the Class 3 state tournament, losing the championship tilt to a team that graduated nine of its top ten players – well, this year’s goal was obvious to all - the program's first state basketball championship.
But it was not to be. For the nine seniors to end their careers in this unexpected and un-Panther like fashion was heartbreaking. In the sectional lost to Duchesne, when they needed to zig, they instead zagged, landing them square in the cross hairs of the basketball gods of fate. The result was cruel and harsh; something the players and coaches will never really get over. Sure, they tell you it will pass, but it never will, not completely. This group had too much invested, came so close, to ever have this disappointment completely exorcised from their competitive souls.
The class of 2022 will forever be known as the group that never lost to a Clarence Cannon Conference member. Who won four straight district titles and 12 consecutive regular season tournaments. Beat hated rival Palmyra 17 consecutive times. Let me say that again so as to sink in for the true Monroe faithful who from cradle to grave curse the color Orange – 17 straight times.
The last four years will be recorded in this basketball crazy town as the best of times, capped by one bad night. Still, for the barber shop experts, Duchesne game be damned, the past four seasons will be memorialized as a golden era, maybe the best, of Monroe City boys’ basketball.
This was a team so connected to its fans that home games took on the focus of a Neighborhood Watch group. Don’t mess with our boys. The team and town were sewn together. Woe to the one to try to tear the two apart. The feel in the gym, it had the MC thing going. The joy, the exuberance. It is the sense you feel with the flow rolling over the beat - when tradition, atmosphere and talent converge to form community. When a whole small town unites in such a way over its schoolboy stars, well, it is just uniquely special.
“Those are some remarkable accomplishments,” Edris told the Hannibal Courier-Post. “In addition to their success on the basketball court, they made a tremendous impact on our youth. They were great teammates and will go on to be successful in life.”
Edris says this group has a sense of gratefulness for things that a lot of young people take today for granted. “They are just grateful that they are able to play." Edris paid tribute and gave credit to the parents of his Class of 2022. "I put a lot of stock in parenting, and our parents of this year’s seniors have shown me what positive parenting is all about."
Edris commented to me on the maturity of the Class of 2022. "They have good heads on their shoulders," says the Coach. "These are kids you don't mind doing things for because you know they appreciates it. There's no star syndrome. They always think team first.”
The locker room after a hard-fought season ending loss is always tough. This one is brutal. There is nothing left of “The Dream” but the pieces—pieces of youth, pieces of hope, bits of fraternity, scraps of melancholy, shards of humor, shreds of a cohesive bond. All around lies scattered breakage. Perhaps these pieces—diverse, disconnected, dispelled—can someday be put together whole again to tell the story of this great run by a record setting band of brothers. But not this night. Tonight, in this locker room, disappointment boarding on grief abounds.
Edris seemed almost in shock. He looked around the locker room and saw a group that had grown so tight, now in tears, never to be a team again. For the seniors it was the jarring moment when you realize it is over. It really is over. A string of sweetly remembered non-moments flashes by and suddenly the realization these amount to some of the best, most impacting experiences of your life. It is bittersweet.
“It was almost like it really didn’t happen, we hadn’t lost, had we?” Edris recalled a week later, as he prepared to depart for the state tournament, for the first time in three years as a spectator. “It was just so sudden. One minute we had the lead, we were feeling confident. We had done this before, two years in a row. No way this felt any different.” Until it did.
By design, high school sports are cruel. Most former high school athletes will remember their final game or contest as a time of defeat. Unless you are a member of a squad that wins the state championship your senior year, your career will end, as it does for over 99% of us, in defeat.
Chiseled deep into my coaching consciousness are yearly devastating bus rides home after a crushing playoff defeat. It happened every year I coached but twice. On those solemn rides, I mourned for our seniors. For them, it was over, short of our dream of returning as conquering heroes, dismounting the steps of the bus to be overwhelmed by cheering crowds of worshipers. Instead, these young men who had devoted so much and who now cried tears of unfulfilled dreams, slowly walked through a dark and empty parking lot and away forever from the role that until now had so defined their very young lives.
It is now the first week of March 2022 and every night in towns large and small all over this great nation, with each post season playoff defeat, childhoods are ending, and dreams are dying. A young athlete has such a small window of opportunity to be the “hero,” to capture a slice of March Madness – one shining moment. A few do and they become legends, a favored son who in the eyes of the hometown fans will remain forever young; perpetually enshrined on the top shelf of local lore as a champion.
The opposite is also true. The President of the local Bank may on the surface appear as the successful businessman, a pillar of the community who serves on all the important committees, owning membership to all the influential clubs. But to the true partisans of the local hoop scene, he will be forever the kid who misfired on a wide-open jumper at the buzzer of the one point Regional loss back in ‘81, a year the hometown team finally had the talent to win it all. It is a burden to be carried to the grave.
So, what went wrong against Duchesne? Until the last quarter neither team had any offensive rhythm. Both sloshed through a first half that saw the Panthers hold an ugly 16-11 intermission lead. For the first quarter, the Panthers attempted only five two-point field goals, misfiring on all five.
Edris said his team was focused defensively but never could find it’s, offensive legs. “They run a lot of set plays and we just totally shut them down in the first half,” observed Edris. “I thought defensively our kids really locked in on the scouting report and we did a great job defending. We just couldn’t get anything to go on offense.”
An incredible stat for the game was that the Panthers had no points off transition. “If I had seen before the game, I would have thought we would have been beaten badly,” said Edris. “We had no easy points, zero. That is just hard to believe. Points in transition has been such a big part of our success with this group. I can’t explain it. I thought in the second half, after we shut down their set offense in the first half, they went to a lot more of almost a free-lance type of offense. That seemed to work better for them. They were depending on their size and their athletic abilities to break us down off the dribble.”
The Pioneers of Duchesne did provide some match up problems for Edris’ team. “They were long and athletic. They put a lot of pressure on Josh, but he handled it well.” It was if the team from St. Charles County was saying, let Josh Talton have his, we will shut the rest down. “We isolated Josh on our last two possessions,” said Edris, “and he hit two big shots. The last to put us ahead and on that one he was tripled teamed.”
Throughout the season Monroe City used its tenacious man to man defense to create offensive points. Against Duchesne, the Panthers had only five steals. “They did a lot offensively off the dribble. Our kids are good at stopping the dribble, but tonight, they were quick and especially in the second half, we had to help a lot to stop the dribble. That had a lot to do with us not getting steals. It also opened the three-point shots and they hit three big ones in the 4th quarter. We couldn’t get our hands on the dribble, and they didn’t pass much so we didn’t get our hands on passes, either; didn't get the deflections we normally do. They were rugged and it made the game ugly, rough and tumble and that seemed to be how they were more comfortable playing.”
For the game, over one half of Monroe City’s points were scored by Josh Talton. He finished the night with 23 points. He alone scored all the Panthers 12 third quarter points. Normally, seniors Josiah Talton and Deion White could be counted on for double figure scoring. Against Duchesne they totaled three points. Combined, they attempted only two shots. Edris deferred some of the limited shots to Duchesne game plan. “For most of the game they defended Josh tight, but with only one player. Our guys feed him the ball.”
Monroe City hit a season low 13 field goals, with almost half, six, from behind the three-point arc. Only five made field goals were assisted by passes. The five assists were less than a third of what MC had averaged for the season. Normally, a good high school team will set a goal of two assists for each turnover. This 2-1 margin would indicate a good floor game with crisp passing leading to makeable shots. The Panthers had a season worst assist to turnover ratio in the sectional loss, committing 13 turnovers, with only the five assists.
But even with MC’s statistical Armageddon of a meltdown, it took a last second shot to beat them. That only makes the result harder to accept.
Nathan DeGuentz was the Duchesne unlikely hero. He rebounded a wild and wayward shot and off balanced threw in a winning layup with 1.2 seconds left to give Duchesne the 45-44 victory over Monroe City.
“The ball just landed in my hands and I just threw it up there,” DeGuentz honestly told the press minutes after his game deciding shot, as his teammates and school chums piled back slaps upon a player who entered the game averaging in single figure points per game.
Edris called timeout immediately after DeGuentz basket to set up a desperation last second shot. Incredibly, it almost worked. Josh Talton’s half-court heave hit the back of the rim head on and then spun out, mere inches from a miraculous game saving rescue of a shot.
“I thought it was money as soon as I shot it,” Talton said, speaking to the media immediately after the game’s conclusion.
Monroe City who had led most of the game, appeared dug in after three quarters with the score in their favor, 30-27. “We have been here before, done this before,” was Edris’ message as he sent his team back on to the floor for the game’s final eight minutes. It would prove to be a punch and counter punch dual to the finish, the win, ultimately, to the one with the last punch.
Finally, in the game’s last stanza, for both teams, the scoring pace accelerated. Josh Baker Mays 3-pointer with 2:05 left cut the Monroe City lead to 39-38.
After Josiah Talton was fouled and made one of two free throws, Amorion Oliphant made a second-chance 3-pointer off an offensive rebound to give the Pioneers a 41-40 lead. Josh Talton countered with a layup 22 seconds later to give the lead once more back to the Panthers. On the ensuing possession, Cam Lee drew a foul and dropped in both free throws with 40 seconds left to give Duchesne a 43-42 lead.
With 25 seconds left, Joshua Talton, following a MC timeout, made a contested 10-foot jumper to pin ball the one-point lead, for the final time, back to the Monroe City side of the scoreboard.
Duchesne got the ball into the hands of Lee, their leading scorer and the 6’3” senior erratically free-lance dribbled around the Panther defense, searching for an opening to allow him to penetrate to the rim. MC's defense was rock solid. With 5.6 seconds remaining, and the Pioneer offense breaking down, Duchesne wisely called its last timeout.
Edris, who after seeing the Duchesne offensive set after their timeout, used a time out of his own to set his defense. Off the baseline, the ball was inbounded to Oliphant. The Panthers were in perfect defensive position to defend the inbounds play. Once again, the scouting report had paid off. Oliphant threw towards the rim an off balanced shot from behind his head, a desperate attempt to get a shot, any shot, up to the rim. The ball stuck the bottom of the rim and caromed straight down and into the floor. Panther Deion White appeared to get two hands on the bouncing basketball, but it slipped from his hands. If White could have just batted the ball, the game would have been over. He was so close but could not gain control. Instead, the ball bounced once off the floor again and into the hands of a very fortuitously placed one Nathan DeGuentz.
Instant hero.
The Monroe seniors, who only minutes before had been at the apex of their careers, cashing in on all the years of hard work in perfecting their skills, had now suddenly swollen the ranks of former Panther players.
With three minutes to play, the script of another clutch post season win seemed to be taking shape. Then, in less time that it would take to go to the concession stand for a bag of popcorn, the seniors found their careers over. Since 3rd grade, learning the nuances of the game had dominated their lives, molded their self-identity, always a constant reminder of who they were - Monroe City Panther basketball players. Most will never again play in an organized basketball game.
Edris gathered himself well. He told the assembled media, as reported by the Hannibal Courier-Post online edition, “It’s been awesome to watch them from the time when they were coming to basketball camps and were so young, and to watch them go through junior high and eventually into high school. They are the ultimate competitors. Practice is awesome because you can split up teams and they can go after it and have fun.”
“The teammates that they are and the impact that they have on little kids in Monroe City, that’s the legacy you would want them to leave. They’re such good role models and everything you would want from a dad if they were one of your sons. The parents should be very proud, and I know they are. I know our community is proud.”
“This is going to sting for a while, especially for the kids, but we told them that nothing that happens today is going to change the way we feel about them. We love these guys, and relationships last a lifetime.”
Time will pass. The world will change. They will depart, some soon this town, all, eventually, this life. But these boys are forever linked by their dreams, by Dr. Naismith's wonderful game.
Monroe City can be at times, hard on basketball coaches. The locals expect to win. Edris can point with pride that not only has he won more career games than any other coach in Panther history, 206, he has also survived long enough to amass the most losses, 99. He is the only coach who has figured a way to extend his Panther coaching tenure beyond 7 years, a previous mark first set by Jerry Cochran almost a half century ago and tied by current assistant coach Rick Baker. Edris just completed his 11th season at the helm of the Panthers, all with Baker as his assistant.
Edris signed on at a time the Panthers had lost 40 consecutive games. His first varsity team promptly ran the string to 44. But a rebirth had been peering cautiously from the hole of irrelevance that had become MC Basketball and Edris says he knew in his gut that he could build here something special. Football players were no longer told they could not play basketball. He brought Ed Talton back to the fold and some of the old school Monroe City toughness with him and three sons who surely helped. The blocks began to fall in place. In 2012 Edris' first team won four games. In 2014, a winning record. In 2017 a district title. In 2019 a Clarence Cannon Conference crown. In 2020 a final four, followed by another in 2021.
Edris entered as an outsider the fishbowl that is coaching high school basketball in a small town. He came as a hired gun entrusted by a small prairie town with the best of its sons, given the knee shaking responsibility of leading them to hardwood glory. Edris, by his performance, has earned a level of acceptance few coaches in small towns ever do, the mercenary tag of an outsider has been removed. He is today the unquestioned master of Monroe City Panther basketball fortunes, valued by an appreciative adopted hometown and a total refutation of the age-old premise that nice guys must finish last. Monroe City basketball is again a feel-good story.
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