Girls’ basketball squads off to promising start

Thursday, October 27, 2016

The annual Banner Graphic girls’ basketball preseason section will be in Saturday’s newspaper, and from brief glimpses at the four Putnam County squads this week it’s shaping up to be a good year.

The teams all have three things in common that are necessary for success — they are well coached, they look to have good guard play and they have some size for post defense and rebounding.

Practices and games are obviously two different things, but the foundations appear in place for success if teams can keep turnovers down and shoot a decent percentage from the field.

Many outstanding players are only freshmen or sophomores, providing for strong foundations over the next few years.

A new feature this year will be that girls’ games each week will be previewed in Monday’s sports section, similarly to how football games have been done this fall on Fridays.

Boys’ games will be previewed on Fridays, with any mid-week games being included on Monday.

Odds and ends

• There have already been some schedule changes. South Putnam’s girls were scheduled to open their season on Tuesday against Clay City, but since the Eels won their volleyball sectional that game was postponed to Dec. 6.

North Putnam added a game at North Vermillion on Thursday that was not on previously-released schedules.

• Northview was the only team among the five area sectional volleyball champions to win its regional match on Tuesday night.

The Knights dropped the first two sets at home to Western Boone, before coming back to win the final three straight to capture their fourth regional title in a row.

The Knights will play New Palestine on Saturday in the Jasper semistate.

The other four teams each lost quickly by 3-0 scores — Indianapolis Tindley over Clay City, Evansville Mater Dei over Linton, Covenant Christian over Cascade and Lafayette Central Catholic over Riverton Parke.

You are a close reader of this column if you can find the common thread among those four winning schools.

• Only two basketball players from Putnam County could be found on college basketball rosters this winter — Greencastle’s Callan Taylor at St. Mary-of-the-Woods and Cloverdale’s Brantson Scott at Anderson.

Ryan Coble of Greencastle would have been Scott’s teammate this year, but he chose instead to enroll at the Standard of Excellence Academy in Charlotte, N.C.

We will catch up with Ryan next week to find out how he plans to use this opportunity to improve his college basketball opportunities.

Please let me know if I have missed anyone.

• MTC Sports, which produced the Pat Rady documentary titled “A Basketball Life,” does a great job in providing online video service to many different schools throughout West Central Indiana.

Tonight’s North Putnam at Monrovia football game is being telecast on mtcsports.net, as well as Saturday’s Marian vs. Concordia (Mich.) football game.

The Marian game kicks off at 1 p.m. on Saturday, with Putnam County grads Robert Gibson and Joe Masters of South Putnam and Tyler Lotz of Cloverdale on the squad.

The Knights are still undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the nation as they seek to defend their NAIA national championship.

Don’t forget the premiere of the Rady film is Nov. 17 at Cloverdale.

Respond to this story

Posting a comment requires free registration: