NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – After the Monument Mountain boys basketball team Wednesday jumped out to a 6-0 lead at Drury, the Spartans were never not in control of the game.
But their grip was slipping just a little bit to open the third quarter, when Drury held Monument scoreless for more than two minutes and pulled within nine on a putback by Amont David.
That is when Monument coach Randy Koldys called timeout.
“We just had to bring it,” the Spartans’ Kyle Wellenkamp said afterward. “We knew they were going to come out in the second half hard. We just had to bring more energy and intensity than them.
“And we just did that.”
The Spartans went on a 16-0 run, finished the quarter with a 25-point lead and made the trip home to Great Barrington with a 4-0 record and a 77-49 win over previously-unbeaten Drury (3-1).
Wellenkamp scored a team-high 22 points and pulled down 10 rebounds.
He hit four 3-pointers, including three in the third quarter alone.
“The third quarter was huge for us,” Koldys said. “We played with some intensity on the defensive end, which really made a big difference. Because we didn’t do that in the first half. We got in so much foul trouble in the first half. Even our bus driver had two fouls in the first half.”
Early in the first half, the Spartans did put some pressure on the short-handed Blue Devils, turning the ball over a couple of times in a 14-4 run to open the game that ended on a Wellenkamp putback
The lead stayed double digits until a 6-0 Drury run that spanned the first and second quarters and was capped by a bucket in transition from Louis Guillotte (game-high 23 points, nine rebounds) to make it 23-14.
But Monument Mountain answered with a pair of baskets from Kahlil Carlson (18 points, 10 boards, two blocks), and Drury never got closer than nine points the rest of the way.
The last time was on that bucket by David (eight points, 10 rebounds) early in the third quarter.
Coming out of the ensuing timeout, Wellenkamp hit a triple to re-establish the double-digit lead.
Monument Mountain then got five points from Manny Brown (13 points, six boards), a bucket in the post from Adam Kronenberg and a Carlson free throw before five more points from Wellenkamp to open a 57-32 bulge.
The Spartans forced five turnovers during that stretch.
“I kind of felt like we were letting them waltz through the middle of the lane,” Koldys said of his message during the timeout that preceded the knockout run. “You can still put pressure on them in a zone, which we did. And I was happy we came out and did a nice job at the end of that quarter.”
The fourth quarter belonged largely to the reserves for both teams. Isaiah Keefner scored seven of his nine points in the final eight minutes for Monument Mountain. Drury’s Darin Vidal hit a pair of 3-pointers and scored eight points in the quarter.
“We got a lot of guys into it,” Koldys said. “We were missing two of our bench guys tonight, but we had a chance to play a lot of guys today, which is really pretty cool, especially up here.
“I’ve coached for a long, long time, like 40 years. And we haven’t had many blowouts like this [at Drury]. Jack [Racette] will have his team ready by the end of the year. They’ll be much, much better than they are now. They’re young, and he’ll have them much better than they are now.”
Monument Mountain, which has won its first four games by an average of more than 18 points per game, hosts Lenox on Friday night.
Drury will look to get back in the win column on Tuesday when it hosts Greenfield.
