SV boys roll to victory over McKinley

St. Vincent boys basketball coach Bruce Valleroy couldn’t have asked for a better start to his team’s season. Third seed St. Vincent took care of six seed McKinley Classical Leadership Academy 90-33 in the opening round of the Rolla “Duke” Herbert Tournament in Crystal City Monday.
“We were down 2-0, but we took off from there,” Valleroy said.
The Indians scored 33 points in the first quarter and led 52-22 at the half and outscored McKinley 26-4 in the third quarter.
“I would say that this was a total group effort,” Valleroy said. “We had nine guys who played tonight and all nine contributed. We had everyone score except one, which was Dylan DeWilde, but he did a lot of other things for us.”
It was the highest scoring game for the Indians since the team scored 98 against Bismarck in Jan. 2020. Valleroy was impressed with the offensive output. St. Vincent shot 41-69 from the field in the contest. (59.4 percent)
“I was very pleased with this being our first game,” Valleroy said. “We shot nearly 60 percent and we probably missed at least 10 layups. I thought we did pretty much whatever we wanted on the offensive end. We probably scored half of our points on the fast break by beating them down the floor and getting easy looks.”
St. Vincent was led by four players in double figures, including senior Blake Monier with 31 points, while Simon Unterreiner scored 20 points. Grant Abernathy had 13 points and Jacob Schremp had 10 points.

Valleroy was impressed with Monier’s performance that paced the Indians.
“He did a little bit of everything,” Valleroy said. “Offensively, he did a good job driving to the basket, and hit both of his three-pointers. He did a good job getting in the passing lane and finishing on the break. Those are the type of games we need from Blake because he is one of the leaders on the team.”
The St. Vincent defense was effective on Monday, holding McKinley to 18 points in the final three quarters.
“You have to win games that you hold teams to 18 points through three quarters and 33 for the game,” Valleroy said. “As the game went on I thought we played much better defensively.”
St. Vincent defeated Grandview in the opening round of the Crystal City Tournament last year, only to fall to Herculaneum and Saxony Lutheran in the next two contests to finish fourth. Valleroy likes where his team is now compared to this time last season.
“We lost two starters, but we felt like with our bench coming back and players coming up from the JV, and with a more experienced group, we thought we could get out of the gate early and be competitive right off the bat.”
St. Vincent continued the tournament Wednesday when they competed against second seed Saxony Lutheran. The Crusaders defeated Grandview 70-16 on Tuesday.