Max Wheeler scores career high 27 to lead St. Vincent to Mayor’s Cup win

The parking lots surrounding the Perry Park Center were packed with cars and the makeshift arena set the stage for the annual Mayor’s Cup rivalry game between St. Vincent and Perryville on Saturday, Jan. 27, in Perryville, Mo.

St. Vincent sophomore Max Wheeler was the star of the show as he put up a career-high 27 points to lead the Indians to a 75-51 win over the Pirates.

“We knew that shooting was gonna be a big part of our play today,” Wheeler said. “Once I caught the ball, I knew I was gonna be able to shoot it a lot.”

Players from both teams entered the court racked with nerves, as the Mayor’s Cup crowd was the biggest they had ever experienced in their careers.

“It’s an honor to be on this court,” Wheeler said. “Some of the feelings I have is like, nervous, playing in a big crowd, one of the biggest crowds I get all year outside of going into districts. But it’s fun. It’s a lot of a lot of fun playing on this court.”

Wheeler got the Indians going in the first quarter with 15 of the Indians’ 22 points during the period to take a 22-16 lead. After a slow second quarter, the Indians maintained and slightly grew their lead in the third quarter before ramping up the offense in the fourth quarter with 26 points, 12 coming from Wheeler.

“We realized that they’re gonna be coming out more so that’s when we started driving it down to our big man, Jacob Schremp, and he got a lot of files for us and they got a lot of points,” Wheeler said.

Schremp scored 16 points for the Indians and 11 more came from Colden Prost. The Indians scored more than 70 points for the second consecutive game. The Indians are now scoring 62.4 points per game this season, which is the most since 2020, the last time they won 20 games.

St. Vincent head coach Bruce Valleroy said earlier in the season that he expected a slow start because most of the team was coming from the football playoffs and needed time to gel as a team. He projected that his team would find their groove after the Valle Catholic Tournament. The Indians (11-7) are now 6-1 during the month of January.

“I didn’t want to brag or nothing but, it’s gonna take you a while to get going,” Valleroy said. “I’ve been fortunate over the years, successful football teams, where we started out late, I always picked a point in the season where we were gonna go and take off from them. I thought with this group, they’re very knowledgeable, they really love the game of basketball, I thought it’d take us maybe a month you know to get going maybe a little bit in January. Once we got done with the Christmas tournament at Valle, we really got after and really started to improve. You hate to say it, but we’ve only been together two months, everybody else has been together three. So we’re really getting into the middle of our normal basketball season and we’re really starting to click on all cylinders right now.”

A big reason behind the turnaround has been due to their offense.

“The beginning of the year we didn’t score many points, but it took us a while to shoot the ball get a little better,” Valleroy said. “Our defense has been there for the most part.”

Evan Hayden led the Pirates (2-16) with 12 points, while Karston Schilli and Jake Cissell added 10 points each. Justin Dreyer returned to coaching the Pirates after being away from the ship for a decade.

“It’s a neat environment for our town,” Dreyer said. “I thought our kids handled it just fine. They played really hard. Unfortunately we just couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn. We couldn’t get a shot to fall for us.”

Dreyer said this year’s Mayor’s Cup environment is similar to when he was last a coach, but the atmosphere is still unique.

“I think this is probably the biggest crowd we’ve had probably since the COVID year, so that was really good to see a lot of people coming out,” Dreyer said, “Anytime you come down here for this game, the crowds are going to be the same as the other half is going to be, very big, so it’s really neat.”

The Perryville girls’ basketball team won their game against St. Vincent 39-30 before the boys' game. Brooklyn Moll led the Pirates (12-5) with 20 points as the double-digit scorer.

The Pirates scored seven points in the first quarter and held the Indians (8-9) to seven points throughout the first half to lead 17-7. The Indians returned the favor in the third quarter and with a pair of three-point baskets lowered the deficit to 22-18 entering the fourth quarter.

The Indians kept the offense going in the fourth quarter with 12 points, including a 5-of-6 free-throw clip. Perryville only made 5-of-17 from the free throw line in the fourth quarter but still managed to score 17 points in the final period to stave off the St. Vincent rally.

The Perryville girls, who are 6-1 in January, will close out the month at Chaffee on Jan. 30, while the boys will close it out at home against Jefferson on Jan. 31.

The St. Vincent boys team will take on Saxony Lutheran on the road, while the girls will host St. Pius X on Jan. 30.