BENNETT'S MINUTES: Mustangs make statement in WVC

Divisional basketball in the Western Indiana Conference is more than halfway over, with three of the five girl/boy doubleheaders taking place in December.

The final two doubleheader nights will take place over the next two weeks, with several big matchups on the card this Friday night that will go a long way toward deciding the pairings for the crossover round games.

In the boys’ East Division, a four-way tie exists for first place between Edgewood, Indian Creek, Cloverdale and Cascade – with each team standing at 2-1. Owen Valley is fifth at 1-2 and Brown County is sixth at 0-3.

This week’s matchups have Edgewood at Brown County and Owen Valley at Cloverdale. Cascade is involved in the Hendricks County Tourney this weekend, so the Cadets and Indian Creek will play in the final conference game on Jan. 20.

With no undefeated teams, chances are the final order of finish will be decided via tiebreaker.

In the boys’ West Division, Sullivan has a 3-0 record and will win the divisional title if it only splits its final two conference games against South Putnam and West Vigo. Greencastle is second at 2-1, but Sullivan would hold a head-to-head tiebreaker advantage.

This week, Northview plays at Greencastle, West Vigo plays at North Putnam and South Putnam travels to Sullivan.

The Tiger Cubs would need to take care of business against Northview and North Putnam the next two Fridays and hope for a lot of help from Sullivan opponents to have a chance for the league title.

Edgewood took a huge step toward establishing itself as potentially the league’s premier team, defeating West Vigo, Terre Haute North, Linton-Stockton and Terre Haute South on four consecutive days last week to win the First Financial Wabash Valley Classic title.

The Mustangs opened their season with losses to Bloomington South and Martinsville, and lost 63-55 at Indian Creek in conference play last month. The Mustangs will make trips to Putnam County on the next two Saturdays, playing at South Putnam this week and at Greencastle next week.

Edgewood’s Chayton Howard, a 6-6 senior forward, has greatly expanded his shooting range and was named the Wabash Valley Classic’s Most Outstanding Player. Junior point guard Joe Kido and freshman standout Trevor Taylor were also named to the all-tournament team, as was Cloverdale’s Jalen Moore.

Others on the 11-player honor team were Braden Kalber of South Vermillion, De’Avion Washington and Craig Porter of Terre Haute South, Jake Richards of Casey-Westfield (Ill.), Cayman Hayes and Richard Suggs of Terre Haute North and Walker Sandschafer of Robinson (Ill.).

Owen Valley finished fourth in the tourney, while Linton-Stockton was third.

On the girls’ side, the undefeated West Division leaders will play this week with Northview at Greencastle. South Putnam sits in third at 2-1, and could force a three-way tie if the Eagles win out and both the Knights and Tiger Cubs lose one of their remaining games.

In the East Division, Owen Valley leads at 3-0 while Indian Creek is second at 3-1. Owen Valley has a huge league game this week at third-place Cloverdale, but has faltered lately after winning its first 12 games of the season. The Patriots lost to a pair of Class 4A powers (50-47 to Mooresville and 54-49 to Bloomington South) and then lost 44-31 to Brownstown Central (14-5) in a holiday tournament.

The Patriots close out WIC play against last-place Edgewood next week, so they could most likely wrap up the East Division title with a win this week.

Girls’ crossover games are on Jan. 19, while boys’ crossover games are on Jan. 26.

Conference competitions for the remaining winter sports will be on Jan. 20, with the wrestling tournament at Edgewood and the swimming at Indian Creek. The diving competition will also be at Indian Creek on Jan. 17.

Odds and ends

• The Putnam County middle school boys’ basketball tourney is set for next week, with first-round games taking place on Monday and the final round on Wednesday. WIC middle school tourney action begins on Jan. 13, with the seventh-grade tourney starting at Greencastle and the eighth-grade tourney at Sullivan. Championship games are at Cloverdale on Jan. 16.

• Greencastle’s Emma Wilson has continued to pick up honors after her outstanding 2017 running accomplishments.

MileSplit Indiana has named Wilson the state’s top 2017 athlete for running sports, after her double victory in the 1,600 and 3,200 events in track last spring and her cross country title in the fall. Wilson was rated ahead of Indianapolis Pike’s Lynna Irby, who won the 100-, 200- and 400-meter dashes for all four years of high school.

Wilson was also named a third-team All-American by MileSplit for the cross country season, earning a spot on the 21-member squad.

Wilson is also one of eight finalists finalist for the Indianapolis Star’s Indiana Sports Awards in girls’ cross country. Other finalists include Edgewood’s Annalyssa Crain and two of Wilson’s top individual competitors over the past few seasons, Tyler Schwartz of Dekalb and Phoebe Bates of Carmel.

The award program will be April 29 at Butler’s Clowes Memorial Hall, with former Indianapolis Colts’ receiver Reggie Wayne as the keynote speaker.

Cloverdale’s Cooper Neese was a finalist last year in boys’ basketball.

• Cloverdale coach Patrick Rady passed along an interesting story in the wake of Jalen Moore’s 53-point game last month, which marked the second straight year a Clover had surpassed that total.

Only a few dozen 50-point games have been recorded in state history, and Moore’s effort was the third where Rady was present. The first came when his dad was coaching at Winchester, and one of his players (Paul Wolfe) had 50 points that night.

Young Rady doesn’t remember much about that game, however; he was a newborn attending his first-ever basketball game.

Moore tied Neese and Rick Ford for the Cloverdale boys’ school record. Belle Union’s Wayne Bright holds what is believed to be the boys’ county single-game record with 57 points against Lizton on Feb. 6, 1965.

Ann Hutcheson has the Cloverdale all-gender single-game scoring record, with a 60-point performance against Eminence in a Feb. 3, 1988 sectional game. That game is the highest-recorded single-game tournament scoring performance ever, according to ihsaa.org.

• Several lists of football post-season honors will be published in the next week or so, with the final lists of award winners being released just prior to Christmas.

Greencastle’s Cade Winslow will feature prominently in the list of winners.