22 Dec 2019

City of Palms Classic Semi-Final: Montverde Academy vs McEachern

Event Coverage, Headlines

Photo courtesy City of Palms Classic

The final game of the night featured a loaded Montverde team taking on McEachern out of Georgia.  Sharife Cooper of McEachern led them to last year’s City of Palms title, earning the MVP, along the way, but he is the lone returnee from that group.

Montverde scored first on a bucket inside from Cade Cunningham.  A three from Bobby Moore gave them the lead.  Day’ron Sharpe scored for Montverde but another Moore three returned the lead to McEachern.  Scottie Barnes (pictured) scored in transition and Caleb Houston hit a three for the Eagles in response.  A score by Israel Palmer in transition brought McEachern back to within a point, 9-8, with 5:51 left in the first quarter.  Montverde flexed its muscles from there, outscoring McEachern 16-9 the rest of the quarter to lead 25-17.

Things snowballed downhill for McEachern in the second quarter.  Montverde got on a roll on both sides of the floor, seemingly scoring with ease and doing all it could (most of it successfully) to take Cooper out of the game for McEachern.  The Eagles outscored McEachern 27-12 over the course of the quarter to lead 52-29 at the break.

Believe it or not, things got worse for McEachern in the third.  Montverde was out to make a statement, and did so to the tune of a 31-9 domination of the scoreboard over the next eight minutes.  Their lead was now forty-five, 83-38.  Now the question was would Montverde hit the century mark?

They nearly did, despite putting in their bench.  With thirty-six seconds left, Moses Moody became a “mass murderer” with a crushing dunk over multiple McEachern bodies to make the score 99-48.  A foul was called on McEachern and Moody had a chance to get the Eagles to one hundred.  He missed and McEachern was content to run out the clock with their bench players.

Montverde put seven(!) players in double figures as Barnes, Houstan, and Moody each had 14 points, Zeb Jackson tallied 13 points, Cunningham and Sharpe contributed 11 points each and Langston Love added 10 points.

Cooper finished with 15 points for McEachern.