WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – The Monument Mountain boys basketball team forced 17 first half turnovers to build a 27-point lead en route to an 81-52 win over Mount Greylock on Thursday night.
Griffin McElroy scored 15 points, and Manny Brown and Khalil Carlson each finished with 14 for the Spartans, who finished the 2022 portion of their schedule with a record of 5-0.
The story of the night was Monument Mountain’s defense, which produced easy buckets out of its press throughout the first half, starting the game with a 17-0 run to erase an early 5-2 Mount Greylock lead.
“I always expect to have a tough game up here at Mount Greylock, but our defense in the first half was tremendous,” Monument Mountain coach Randy Koldys said. “It’s the best defense we’ve played all year long.
“We’ve been working really hard to try and get better as a team defensively. And some of that showed up tonight, so I’m really happy with the guys and what they did tonight – real proud of them.”
Carlson scored eight points in the first quarter, which also saw McElroy knock down a couple of 3-pointers back-to-back to make it a 13-5 lead.
Carlson finished below his 22 point per game scoring average but contributed a number of blocks, steals and assists to go with 11 rebounds.
“He was totally unselfish tonight,” Koldys said of Carlson. “He could go for as many points as he wants to, but he wants to make sure everyone else is involved. … He didn’t score a lot of points tonight, but that didn’t affect what he did defensively and the way he cleaned up a lot of our stuff on the backside with nice blocks and great defensive rebounds.
“I’m really happy with the defensive effort tonight.”
Mount Greylock’s Jackson Shelsy started the second quarter with a 3-pointer to cut the deficit to 13 at 25-12.
But the Spartans answered with a 16-0 run that all but put the game out of reach. McElroy got things started with a bucket in transition, and Adam Kronenberg capped the run with a basket assisted by Carlson to make it 41-12 with three minutes left in the half.
Monument’s press produced six quick points during the 16-point spurt.
“No doubt, this is a good team,” Mount Greylock coach Bob Thistle said of Monument Mountain. “They dropped a 30 piece on us, and they’re beating everybody by that score. And we wanted this challenge. We wanted them on our schedule. We know what they’re about, and they’re only going to make us better.
“They’ve got a good press. We didn’t handle it well. And the second part of it is, when you do break the press, you think, ‘Oh, we’ve got some numbers here. We’ve got to get organized and run our stuff.’ And they bait you into taking quick shots. The Carlson kid, the [Kyle] Wellenkamp kid, Brown. They’re a good team.”
The Mounties played even in a second half that was dominated by both benches.
Before the starters departed, Mount Greylock’s Chase Doyle scored all 14 of his points in the third quarter – slicing to the basket and dropping in a 3-pointer.
“We’re 2-3, and we’ve lost a couple of close games, but we haven’t really shot the ball well yet,” Thistle said. “I keep saying, and I’ve said it for years. It’s December basketball. You survive December getting reps, and I’m really confident that we will start to make shots. I think we’re going to be a decent shooting team by January.”
Plenty of Monument Mountain reserves saw significant time in the second half. Brown, who was one of the first off the bench back in the first quarter, dropped in three 3-pointers in the second half.
“And as we speak, his older brother is taking on Maryland on ESPNU,” Koldys said of former Spartan Dion Brown, who had 10 points and nine rebounds in an 80-64 loss for the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (9-5) in College Park against the Terrapins (10-3).
“So it’s a great family trait they have that they play so well. And he’s just a great kid, Manny is, and he did some really good things for us tonight.”
Monument Mountain is off until next Thursday when it hosts Easthampton.
Mount Greylock is at Mount Everett on Tuesday.
