Greencastle girls stay hot with win over Athenians

CRAWFORDSVILLE – Greencastle’s girls’ basketball team ran its winning streak to four in a row with a convincing 47-23 win over Crawfordsville Tuesday evening on the Athenians’ home court.

Fresh off its Putnam County championship over the weekend the Tiger Cubs (4-3) raced out to a 15-2 lead after the first quarter and never looked back.

Defense was the name of the game all night long for the Tiger Cubs. Even when its offense missed just nine of its first 10 shots in the second quarter, Greencastle was able to stay comfortably in the lead thanks to its defensive effort.

“I felt like we came out and set the tone early with our defense,” Greencastle coach Bradley Key said. “At times we don’t always shoot the ball real well, but if you bring your defensive game it can do a lot of things for you.”

The Tiger Cubs continued to apply the press on the Athenians (2-5) and stretched its lead to 21-7 and by the half. In the second half, the Athenians never got any closer than 15 points. In fact, the Tiger Cubs managed to push its lead to as many as 29 points early in the fourth quarter when it led 41-12.

Much of the second half the Tiger Cubs were able to work on their offense and most of the points came off on execution that resulted in shots in the paint.

After shooting 10 of 29 in the first half (34 percent), the Tiger Cubs hit 11 of 23 from the floor in the second half (47 percent).

A big part of Greencastle’s success on the offensive end was a result of the play of junior Jalyn Duff.

After leading the team in scoring in the first half with 11 of her game-high 15 points, she turned into a distributor in the second half.

“I thought Jalyn played an outstanding game tonight,” Key said. “She made sure to get the ball where it needed to go. Seelye (Stoffregen) scored a lot of points in the second half but many of them were because of great feeds from Jalyn.”

Stoffregen joined Duff in double figures with 13, all but two coming in the second half.

The Tiger Cubs also managed to control the board with ease, pulling down 46 rebounds to Crawfordsville’s 32. Four different Tiger Cubs players pulled down five or more rebounds with Rose White and Allison Stevens leading the way with eight each.

Crawfordsville was led by sophomore Lauren Kellerman with 10 points as Greencastle limited the Athenians to just 8 of 44 from the field (18 percent).

GREENCASTLE (47) — Stoffregen 6 1-5 13, Duff 7 1-2 15, White 2 0-0 4, Shuee 1 3-4 5, Stevens 0 0-2 0, Robinson 4 0-0 8, Nally 1 0-0 2, Trigg 0 0-0, Doan 0 0-0 0, Richardson 0 0-0 0. Totals 21 5-13 47.

CRAWFORDSVILLE (23) — Viveros 0 0-0 0, Kellerman 3 2-4 10, Laskowski 2 0-0 5, Barnett 0 0-0 0, Simmons 1 0-0 2, Tomlinson 1 0-0 2, Lyans 0 0-0 0, Walbert 0 1-2 1, Frances 0 0-0 0, Sennett 1 0-0 3. Totals 8 3-6 23.

Greencastle 15 6 16 10 — 47

Crawfordsville 2 5 5 11 — 23

3-Point Shooting: Greencastle 0; Crawfordsville 4 (Kellerman 3, Sennett). Turnovers: Greencastle 10; Crawfordsville 16.

Next Game – Greencastle will entertain Tri-West on Tuesday.