February was good to the Montgomery County boys basketball team this season.

The Wildcats played 10 games that month and won eight of them, including a 52-44 win over Hermann in the Class 3, District 7 finals that clinched them their second straight district championship.

The strong efforts in February helped MCHS turn in its third straight winning season. The Wildcats finished 17-13 after losing to Cole Camp on a buzzer-beating shot in a Class 3 sectional game on March 2 in Sedalia.

“I thought that was probably the most improved basketball team that I coached as far as looking at maybe in the beginning of January until the end of the season,” said Scott Kroeger, who completed his fifth season as MCHS coach. “We played in a lot of close basketball games and we did things a lot better than what we did earlier in the season.”

The Wildcats headed into February at 9-11 before they got hot at the end. In addition to the win over Hermann in the district finals, MCHS also had victories over Van-Far, Mark Twain, Louisiana, Moberly, New Bloomfield, North Callaway and the St. Louis Christian Knights.

The Wildcats clinched a winning season with a 59-55 victory over Moberly on Feb. 16 in their regular season finale. They added Moberly to their schedule just two days before.

MCHS didn’t win its third straight Eastern Missouri Conference title as it finished 6-4 in league play. The Wildcats had their 22-game conference winning streak snapped with a loss to Wellsville-Middletown in December.

MCHS will lose four players to graduation – Logan Hutcheson, Keenan James, Ethan Rakers and Drake Smith. Rakers earned second-team all-EMO honors and was named to the all-tournament team at the Hermann Invitational. James was named to the all-tournament team at South Callaway.

The Wildcats will return several players such as freshmen Clayton Parker and Tyler Erwin, juniors Alex Hartman and Zak Rodgers and sophomore Mason Leu next season.
Parker, who is 6-foot-5, earned second-team all-EMO honors. He was named all-tournament at Montgomery County and Hermann.

“We’re going to have to get a whole lot stronger because we’re going to be little,” Kroeger said. “Even though we have a tall dude (Parker) and we have some kids who have a chance to have some height on them, we’re going to be small. We’re going to be inexperienced, which means they have to put themselves in a position to be working in tough areas and putting themselves in tough positions.”

The junior varsity boys basketball team finished 13-5 under Sam Clark, who took over JV/assistant coaching duties this winter after heading the Montgomery County Middle School team last year. Leu, Erwin and freshmen Isaiah Thomas, Jay Rodgers, Sean Rodgers and Tatum Wessel were among the top players for the Wildcats, who finished their season with a six-game winning streak.

The MCMS eighth-grade team finished 12-3 and captured the Bowling Green tournament title. Justin Graves and Dustin Figg were the coaches of a team that had 13 eighth-graders and five seventh-graders.