Stories from Saturday, November 23, 2019

Bryce Rector has gradually built Greencastle into a contender, winning eight games in his first year with the Tiger Cubs, 17 in his second year and then 21 last season — capped off by a sectional championship win at Crawfordsville. The Cubs return four starters from last year’s team who are only juniors, and have several players lining up to fill in for graduated center Gavin Bollman and valuable reserves Andrew York and Trey Wood...

Western Boone, winners of the 2A sectional including North Putnam, earned its second straight trip to the state finals with a semistate win on Friday night. Former North Putnam boss Dave Pasch earned his first trip to the finals with Indianapolis Lutheran...

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Ninth-ranked DePauw moved to 4-0 on the season following a 60-55 victory over #12 Wisconsin-Oshkosh at Wisconsin Lutheran’s Paul Knueppel Classic. The Titans dropped to 2-2. The Tigers scored the game’s first seven points on the way to an 11-6 lead at the quarter break. ...

BIMINI, Bahamas – Indiana State took its best defensive effort of the season and added to it the best shooting performance of the year en route to a 72-60 victory over Loyola Marymount on the second day of the 2019 Junkanoo Jam at Resorts World Bimini...

The obvious necessity to winning championships is to be in a position to win them. North Putnam’s girls broke an eight-year losing streak in the semifinals of the Putnam County tournament on Friday night with their 36-29 win over Greencastle. The Cougars will play defending champion Cloverdale at 7:30 p.m. tonight in search of their first girls’ county title since 2003...

Tempo is a key component in basketball games. If a team can control the speed and style of play, it really has a much better chance to win a game. The Cloverdale Clovers were able to dictate the style of play and pounded the South Putnam Eagles on the boards to pick up 42-36 victory in the opening round of the Putnam County Girls basketball tournament. Cloverdale improved to 3-1 on the season, while the Eagles fell to 2-2 on the young season...

Cloverdale boys’ basketball coach Patrick Rady recognized the emotion in his returning players after last year’s 10-14 season. The program had won at least 19 games for the five seasons leading up to last year. Rady says this year’s team does not want to have another year like last year...

Vince Brooks is excited and energetic about his first varsity basketball team, as he takes over at North Putnam this season from Collin McCartt. Brooks inherits a program that did not have a junior player on the roster last year. The Cougars have added two seniors who did play a year ago, but return a strong group of underclassmen who are eager to reverse a 7-17 record...

For the past four years of Greg Dean’s five-year tenure at South Putnam, the basketball team he put on the court looked similar. However, several members of the large group that included Allen Plunkett, Thomas Fanning, Dalton Scott, Lane Watson, Austin Arnold, Ty VanSickle and Garrett Heavin have graduated — leaving Dean with a mostly new slate of promising young players...