Disturbing Scramble 4A field in southern regional

On By Littum

The southern half of the class 4A girls Basketball fittings are set, with two finals in the Fort Wayne area postponed to Monday, but not in the way the last regular seasonal reconciliation predicted.

Not at all.

In fact, No. 11 Bloomington South is the only ranked team left south of Indianapolis. No. 1 Hamilton Southeastern, No. 4 South Bend Washington, No. 5 Warsaw (which knocked out No. 9 Northridge). No. 10 Noblesville was upset by Westfield, who was beaten by HSE in their final.

Warsaw and SB Washington drew each other in regional, and HSE is likely to get # 3 Homestead as the 10 survivors will be more winning.

Meanwhile, chaos is down south.

• No. 6 Center Grove started the season with a five-point victory over Franklin Central and ended it with a seven-point loss of overtime to the flashes in their section openers. FC (18-9), led by Lily Graves and a talented Sophomore group, was then assembled by Southport (gave the head coach Vince Cerbone his 300. Career benefit) and Mooresville with 30-point margins to move on.

• Pike (18-6) had a brutal path to a title, but took No. 7 Brownsburg 67-50, then disturbed No. 8 Plainfield 64-62 on a last second shot and then survived Avon 69-61.

• Given that Lawrence North (15-8) had weeks shocking in the final of their home floor, dumping rival and defense state champion Lawrence Central (22-2) 47-42. It was their third meeting of the season when Bears won their county tournament opener 52-51 and stamped Wildcats 68-44 in mid-January. LC’s only previous loss was with two to No. 1 HSE.

Decatur Central Regional will contain two tasty matchups: Lawrence North vs. Pendleton Heights (19-6), who had an easy time winning his section with two wins in the race and then Pike vs. Franklin Central.

These two winners will be fed into South’s semistat along with Floyd Central (23-4)/Gibson Southern (20-6) winner. Highlanders finally finished Bedford North’s Lawrence’s 12-year sectional surveillance and beat the stars by 20.

Gibson Southern, who came up to 4A for the first time after winning the 3A title last year, came out with the narrowest margins. The Titans beat Evansville North 61-51 then came with a 39-37 semi-final victory over Castle (reversing a 58-32 loss in season’s game 2) and eventually called from double digits, against Reitz to force overtime in a 47- 41 Victory.

The titans have won 15 of their last 17 including a fourth straight section title.

East Central up next

First thing first for South (22-2), but enjoys an extended postal season for the first time since Addy Blackwell led Panthers to regionally in 2019.

East Central (12-11) pulled a bit of a rebellion in the final of Columbus North, where the host’s Bull Dogs completely lost their shooting eye from a distance, which was such a big part of their game.

North shot 13 percent (3 out of 23) from 3-point range and 30 percent (16 of 53) overall from the field.

East Central took the lead too well early in the third and was up 31-30 and withdrew to a 51-41 lead with 4:22 back. Columbus tiled away within 52-48 with 2:11 back. But East Central just made enough on the line and went 20-of-36 to hang on as Bull Dogs could only score two more points.

Freshman Point Guard Natalie Stenger led the Trojans with 18 points and Sophomore Audrina Dugan ended with 16. Stenger leads EC in the scoring (12.4), rebounding (5.3), assists (2.2) and stealing (3). Dugan is at 8.8 ppg and 5-10 Sophomore Teagan Leihgeber adds 4.2 points and 7.2 rebounds.

The last regional title of the South came in the individual class days back in 1987, the EC has never won one.

Hoosier Basketball Coaches Association Honors

Four players in the area earned spots at Hoosier Basketball Coaches Association Girls Underclass All-District 1 Team.

From the south, juniors Julia Lashley and Violet Hall, from Edgewood, Junior Macey Crider and from Owen Valley, beginner Aubrey Sparks.

Lighthouse struggling to quit

After 18 equal losses, low that 21, if three starters are included for the season, is included, Lighthouse Christian Girls team drew a 33-30 win over Washington Catholic. The lions were running out of only two games left in the regular season, and it took a lot to hold out to that point.

“In the dressing room, they poured water on each other,” said LCA coach Brian Brown. “It was good to get it. We wouldn’t go all season without victory.”

That was hardly the goal when the season started, but when two starters, Jane Holdeman and Aleah Winders, went down into play 1, Sophomore recurring starts Ellie Mae Winders suddenly left surrounded by a whole newborner.

“You’ve heard the phrase you’ll find out a lot about a person’s character when they go through adversity,” Brown said. “She was really all we had. She had to be our leadership and she’s a competitor, so every loss killed her.

“Watching her fight through and try to lead the others and not become discouraged, I want to see other games and watch team giant and you see their best players get over the other players because they don’t play on the same level. You never have seen it from her.

All eight beginner stuck around until the end and were ready for more after the season’s final section loss to State Ranked White River Valley.

“The biggest takeaway is that even though we won a game, at the end of it, everyone, including myself and the staff, was disappointed to see the end of the season,” Brown said. “You would think, ‘wow, it was a long season and they are ready to be done.’ But they enjoyed going ahead and getting better.

“I have already had three parents e -mail to me about what our summer plans are so that they could plan around it. Usually they are planning ahead and if basketball fits it is good. It gave me a good feeling that they are ready to get started again ”

Eastern Greene also grows up

Eastern Greene also underwent a tough campaign with a lot of younger players and the first time varsity starters under the new coach Jeremy Clark. T-Birds went 5-18 and played West Vigo hard in a 42-36 section loss.

“It was a young team and we had a lot of growing pain in the process,” Clark said. “We had five wins and those were the ones we were probably going to win. Our conference has a lot of 1A schools and I thought we were handling our business pretty well.

“Later in the season, some of the growth we had developed, we hoped to play well against teams like Eminence, Clay City and Shakamak, and we did. It was two or three possession games as opposed to the first part where we lost of 30 or 40. We had a rather intense race of eight or nine games in the first part of the season.

Eastern candidates three seniors and will bring 10 back 10 including beginner Breanna Hash and Kaelyn Johnson and Sophomore Shelby Ferkingstad, who achieved big winnings by the end of the year.

“” We have a lot to look forward to, “Clark said.” I think the two largest areas were the ones who could find their voice. They understood the game a little more and what we tried to achieve. And their buy-in to get a higher basketball iQ. They took ownership of it.

“It meant things were slowed down for them when they understood things. It allowed them to play instead of looking at the sidelines after everything.”