After finishing with its fifth consecutive winning season last winter, the Montgomery County girls basketball team didn’t waste any time preparing for the 2022-23 season.

During the summer, the Wildcats competed in five shootouts – including two at home – and played an exhibition game against the Youth Sports Exchange program from Belgium. Their summer ended on a high note on July 7 as they beat the Belgians 31-27 in overtime at Ballew & Snell Court.

“We went and played a lot of really good teams,” said Joe Basinger, who will enter his seventh season as MCHS coach next winter. “It was a productive summer.”

MCHS competed in a shootout at home on June 6. The teams included Battle, Tipton, Hallsville, Wellsville-Middletown, Monroe City, Higbee, Louisiana, Moberly and Mark Twain. The Wildcats beat Moberly and lost to Tipton and Battle.

“I felt like because we had some success over the last few years, we had some better teams that normally don’t come like Battle, Tipton and Moberly,” Basinger said. “I had a lot of good teams show up this time. It was cool that we didn’t have to travel all over the place to find those teams that came to us.”

The Wildcats played another shootout at home and played Centralia, Hermann and North Callaway. They won all three games.

Basinger said his team always look forward to playing in shootouts at home.

“I didn’t do the summer shootout before my first year, but I’ve done it every year since then,” the MCHS coach said. “It’s good for us and it’s good for kids. It keeps us from having to pay in the summertime. We use that money to go pay for our other shootouts.”

The Wildcats also competed in a shootout at Park Hills and finished 3-1, beating Park Hills Central, Farmington and Potosi and losing to South Iron. They participated in a shootout at Drury University in Kansas City and finished with one win out of seven games. They later traveled to Kirksville for a shootout and finished 4-0, beating Kirksville twice and picking up a win apiece over Monroe City and Highland.

Against YSE, the Wildcats came back from a 6-0 deficit to pick up the win. It’s the second time MCHS played against the Belgians. The two teams first squared off in 2019.

“They play so hard and they play really good defense and they’re extremely physical,” Basinger said. “On offense, they get a lot of good shots because they’re so fundamentally sound from their footwork and from what they do. It takes us a second to adjust. Our kids are never quite ready for that type of physicality and that type of basketball. So they had to adjust. I felt like once we adjusted, we were fine.”

Seniors Carson Flake, Carissa Doyle and Bailey Fischer, juniors Malia Rodgers, Claire Cobb, Morgan Koch and Madi Polston and sophomores Aliviah Fischer, Atlanta Kobusch and Karla Gonzalez played for the Wildcats this summer.

Most of them played for a MCHS team that won 20 games and captured Eastern Missouri Conference and district titles in the ‘21-22 season.

Shaw, an all-EMO selection last winter, said she’s already looking forward to next season. MCHS loses only one player – Sam Queathem – to graduation.

“The season is going to be really fun,” Shaw said. “It’s going to be good. We all like to grow and develop better. We lost Sam, who is a big part of it. But we’ll be good.”

Basinger said his goal during the summer is to try to get all of his players equal playing time.

“I think that’s a big opportunity for some kids who don’t get as much playing time through the season to try to battle for a few more minutes and try to show what they’re capable of within our system,” Basinger said. “That’s how we treat the summertime.”