FREEPORT - For the past three years, Monroe boys basketball coach Pat Murphy has been lobbying relentlessly to renew the Monroe-Freeport rivalry.
"We've been in the Monroe Summer League for the past three years and Pat's always saying 'Let's play, let's play,'" Freeport coach Jeff Lawfer said. "I got tired of two-hour bus drives and it's a great thing for the teams and their communities."
What the contest was not great for was the Cheesemakes' run at perfection. After a 27-year hiatus for the interstate classic, Monroe came up on the short end of the scoring stick for the first time in 35 games, 47-44.
Without the services of senior Brett Stangel, who fractured his right leg in the first quarter of Friday's victory at Monona Grove, Monroe leaned on the early red-hot shooting of Bryan Tordoff early. The freshman guard hit three first-half 3s to shoot the Pretzels right out of the matchup zone they'd been sharpening since the holiday season.
"I knew we needed to get out of it or Tordoff was going to have 30, so we went to a gimmick defense," Lawfer said. "We were going to dare their other guys to beat us."
The Pretzles moved to a unique triangle-and-two look to hold down the Tordoff brothers, a look the Cheesemakers, along with most prep clubs, have seen little of if ever.
Bryan's brother, Mitch, felt constant extra attention with Stangel out and had a rough shooting night. Bryan had the game on his fingertips down the stretch, as well. The unflappable freshman buried a double-clutch, contested triple from the right angle with just 6.3 seconds remaining to make the count 45-44.
Two free throws by Freeport junior Ryan Hickey, who finished tied with Monroe post Tony Cates with a game-high 17 points, made the lead three points and Tordoff got the final look as well, but his 30-foot, contested triple harmlessly drew front iron.
Monroe ran into a much more physical element than it's accustomed to and the club never felt farther from the friendly confines than when junior guard Mitch McArdle took a vicious but inadvertent elbow from Pye to the back of the head late in the third and was visibly shaken up as he meandered the court trying to regain his bearings but play was not stopped.
After Monroe burned a timeout to clear McArdle's cobwebs, the Pretzels took their first lead since 4-3 on an old-fashioned three-point play by Hickey on a nice back-door cut. The traditional triple went well with Hickey's four shots from beyond the 3-point arc.
While the refs allowed physical play to fly, Cates caught two hard-luck calls in the second half, the first coming on an offensive foul as he battled to corrale an entry pass and the next with less than 30 seconds to play. With his team down two, Cates caught the ball in the block, allowed his cutters to do their thing and turned to see Isaiah Lewis hitting the floor to draw an offensive foul and earn a varsity-level Emmy.
"I just turned to square up and he was on the ground," Cates said.
"In a regional or sectional, you can see any type of play or styles," Murphy said. "It's how you handle it and battle through it."
The gut-checking loss snaps the Cheesemakers' remarkable winning streak, but it also posed a unique opportunity for Monroe to get some postseason preparation against a relatively unknown foe.
"That's why we did this was to treat it like a sectional tournament with a really quick turnaround," Murphy said. "We could've scheduled any team, we just don't want them to lose confidence. Our goal is to win conference and run at state and if you lose a game or two along the way, you've gotta learn from it."
Coincidentally, another club dealing with adversity is Verona, which also dropped a non-conference contest Saturday night by three points, 79-76, to Randolph. Tonight both clubs will show off their short-term memory as they vie for the top of the Badger South at 6:45 p.m. at Monroe High School.
"We've been in the Monroe Summer League for the past three years and Pat's always saying 'Let's play, let's play,'" Freeport coach Jeff Lawfer said. "I got tired of two-hour bus drives and it's a great thing for the teams and their communities."
What the contest was not great for was the Cheesemakes' run at perfection. After a 27-year hiatus for the interstate classic, Monroe came up on the short end of the scoring stick for the first time in 35 games, 47-44.
Without the services of senior Brett Stangel, who fractured his right leg in the first quarter of Friday's victory at Monona Grove, Monroe leaned on the early red-hot shooting of Bryan Tordoff early. The freshman guard hit three first-half 3s to shoot the Pretzels right out of the matchup zone they'd been sharpening since the holiday season.
"I knew we needed to get out of it or Tordoff was going to have 30, so we went to a gimmick defense," Lawfer said. "We were going to dare their other guys to beat us."
The Pretzles moved to a unique triangle-and-two look to hold down the Tordoff brothers, a look the Cheesemakers, along with most prep clubs, have seen little of if ever.
Bryan's brother, Mitch, felt constant extra attention with Stangel out and had a rough shooting night. Bryan had the game on his fingertips down the stretch, as well. The unflappable freshman buried a double-clutch, contested triple from the right angle with just 6.3 seconds remaining to make the count 45-44.
Two free throws by Freeport junior Ryan Hickey, who finished tied with Monroe post Tony Cates with a game-high 17 points, made the lead three points and Tordoff got the final look as well, but his 30-foot, contested triple harmlessly drew front iron.
Monroe ran into a much more physical element than it's accustomed to and the club never felt farther from the friendly confines than when junior guard Mitch McArdle took a vicious but inadvertent elbow from Pye to the back of the head late in the third and was visibly shaken up as he meandered the court trying to regain his bearings but play was not stopped.
After Monroe burned a timeout to clear McArdle's cobwebs, the Pretzels took their first lead since 4-3 on an old-fashioned three-point play by Hickey on a nice back-door cut. The traditional triple went well with Hickey's four shots from beyond the 3-point arc.
While the refs allowed physical play to fly, Cates caught two hard-luck calls in the second half, the first coming on an offensive foul as he battled to corrale an entry pass and the next with less than 30 seconds to play. With his team down two, Cates caught the ball in the block, allowed his cutters to do their thing and turned to see Isaiah Lewis hitting the floor to draw an offensive foul and earn a varsity-level Emmy.
"I just turned to square up and he was on the ground," Cates said.
"In a regional or sectional, you can see any type of play or styles," Murphy said. "It's how you handle it and battle through it."
The gut-checking loss snaps the Cheesemakers' remarkable winning streak, but it also posed a unique opportunity for Monroe to get some postseason preparation against a relatively unknown foe.
"That's why we did this was to treat it like a sectional tournament with a really quick turnaround," Murphy said. "We could've scheduled any team, we just don't want them to lose confidence. Our goal is to win conference and run at state and if you lose a game or two along the way, you've gotta learn from it."
Coincidentally, another club dealing with adversity is Verona, which also dropped a non-conference contest Saturday night by three points, 79-76, to Randolph. Tonight both clubs will show off their short-term memory as they vie for the top of the Badger South at 6:45 p.m. at Monroe High School.
