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Neese’s 53 points again not enough for Clovers
NEW MARKET — Southmont’s Mounties painfully watched from the stands last spring as Cloverdale cut down the nets in their gym following a win over Monrovia, marking the school’s second straight boys’ basketball sectional title.
Although Sectional 44 has been moved to South Putnam this year, the Mounties apparently did not forget that image burned in their minds when they hosted the Clovers on Saturday night.
Trailing 16-15 after one quarter, the Mounties opened the second quarter on a 13-1 run and went on to an 83-69 victory over Cloverdale.
“They did a good job of getting back in transition,” Cloverdale coach Patrick Rady said. “We didn’t get any easy fast break points. I also thought they did a really good job of playing the gaps and not letting us drive. We didn’t reverse the ball enough.”
There were actually two vastly different segments of the game.
The first part was the one where Southmont dominated the second quarter and most of the third on its way to a 53-33 lead with 2:05 left in the period.
The other one was after Cooper Neese got mad.
Neese had 11 first-quarter points as the teams jockeyed back and forth to the near standoff.
The Mounties came out strongly in the second quarter, taking the lead for good at 20-17 on a basket by Cam Chadd.
That hoop started a 10-0 run which included points from four different players and put Southmont ahead 28-17.
The Clovers had six second-quarter turnovers, limiting their shot attempts. Neese hit just two free throws in the period, missing his only three field goal attempts, as Southmont established a 32-22 lead at the intermission.
Seth Pfaff hit a layup on a feed from Neese to open the second half, and Neese followed with another basket to cut the gap to 32-26.
Southmont then began firing from long range, with four different players hitting treys over the next three minutes.
A basket by 6-5 senior center Kaleb Swick, who led his team with 23 points, put the Mounties up 53-33.
“We came out in the second half and executed out of the halftime well,” Rady said. “We had the best ball movement we’ve had all year. Then we went away from it.
“We have to learn to do a better job of moving the ball when teams are packing it in the paint.”
Normal scoring cohort Jalen Moore had scored 29 points on Friday to support Neese’s 37 in a loss to Edgewood, but was held to five against the Mounties on uncharacteristic 1-for-16 shooting.
“He had been battling the flu all week,” Rady said. “He wasn’t himself all week. We would never use that as an excuse, though.”
With time running out and Moore not as helpful as usual, Neese took over.
A driving left-handed layup with 1:55 left, followed by a trey inside the final minute. A basket plus a free throw, plus another layup and a trey at the buzzer cut the lead nearly in half at 57-46 with 13 straight by Neese to close out the quarter.
A 20-point period on 8 of 12 shooting.
Another Neese trey just 23 seconds into the final period, followed by a short jumper, made it 57-51 and the energetic crowd could sense this was a game again.
The combination of Southmont’s deadly long-range shooters, plus Swick’s muscle inside, proved too much for the Clovers down the stretch, however.
Swick hit back-to-back hoops to push the lead up to 12, and after yet another long Neese trey the Mounties got consecutive long bombs from Cam Chadd and Patrick Scheidler to take a 69-55 lead.
Neese and Swick traded treys, and Neese followed with another bomb to make it 69-60 midway through the period.
Another Chadd trey, coupled with hoops from Justin Howard and Cole Wember, made it 76-60 and the comeback effort wasn’t going to be successful.
“We tried to do some trapping to get back in it, and we did,” Rady said. “As good teams do they did a good job of spreading it and swinging the ball.
“When you have 3-4 different guys who can hit, it’s hard to play a zone defense or trap,” he added. “We wanted them to hit perimeter shots, and they hit them.”
Neese established what is believed to be a Putnam County record with his 53-point total. Pfaff had six points in support.
Southmont, meanwhile, had four players in double figures and another very close.
Besides Swick, Chadd added 16, Ty Williams had 14, Wemer had 13 and Scheidler added nine.
Swick’s strong inside game presented different problems for the Clovers than in their first two games.
“He’s the first real post we’ve played,” Rady said. “We’re going to have to re-evaluate how we’re going to defend the post.
“He had some nice moves and can go either way,” he added. “They have a good 1-2 inside-outside punch.”
The 0-2 weekend presents a challenge for the Clovers, and Rady admits the tough stretch could be beneficial in the long run if his team is able to eventually claim a sectional title.
“Hopefully we react like champions,” he said. “That means at 3:30 [today] they come ready to work and get better. We’ll see if we have the heart of a two-time defending sectional champion.”
Rady told his team to be prepared for inspired performances by opponents, such as from Edgewood and Southmont over the weekend.
“We’ll see what we’re made of,” he said. “Last year we were still an unknown, but now we are the marked team on every team’s schedule.
“It’s different being the hunted,” Rady added. “You have to be a little bit sharper, and you have to have a different mentality. Hopefully this weekend is a wakeup call.”
CLOVERDALE (69) — Neese 18-32 7-8 53, Moore 1-16 3-4 5, Winders 1-1 0-0 2, Wilkes 0-4 0-0 0, Pfaff 2-4 1-3 6, Watts 0-1 0-0 0, Rossok 0-0 0-0 0, Miller 0-0 0-0 0, Kelley 1-1 0-0 3. Totals 23-60 FG, 11-14 FT, 69 TP
SOUTHMONT (83) — Swick 9-12 4-7 23, Chadd 6-17 0-0 16, VanCleave 0-0 0-0 0, Williams 4-8 3-3 14, Wemer 5-7 2-3 13, Howard 3-5 0-0 6, Scheidler 3-6 2-2 9l, Smith 1-2 0-0 2. Totals 31-54 FG, 11-15 FT, 83 TP
Cloverdale 16 6 24 23 — 69
Southmont 15 17 25 26 — 83
3-point shooting — Southmont 10-24 (Swick 1-1, Chadd 4-12, Williams 3-6, Wemer 1-2, Scheidler 1-34), Cloverdale 12-30 (Neese 10-21, Moore 0-5, Wilkes 0-1, Pfaff 1-2). Turnovers — Southmont 10, Cloverdale 15.
JV game — Southmont 54 (Gudell 13), Cloverdale 46 (Kelley 17) in OT.
Next game — Cloverdale (1-2) hosts North Central on Tuesday.