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Clovers hope to learn from big loss to Manual
CLOVERDALE — Patrick Rady knew his Cloverdale Clovers would be in for a tough game on Friday night as they hosted Indianapolis Manual.
The Redskins entered with a deceiving 12-7 record, with most losses coming to Class 4A powerhouse teams.
“We have played quick teams, and we have played tall teams,” Rady said. “We haven’t played anybody both this quick and this tall.”
The result was a 78-46 defeat, but one from which Rady hopes his team can learn.
“You can always get something from a game when somebody beats you,” he said. “We gave effort, it was just skill tonight. Some guys [notably Parker Watts and Jake Wilkes] played better in the second half after they realized they could get some confidence.
“They caused a lot of problems with our quickness, the kind of things that we have done to teams on our schedule.”
The Redskins started 6-8 and 6-9 frontcourt players, and were able to bring 6-5 and 6-7 guys off the bench.
Coupled with a speedy guard trio of Joshua Pack, Braxton Houston and Montez McNair, the Redskins were able to harass the Clovers offensively and force numerous turnovers and missed shots.
The obvious target of their attention was Cloverdale’s Jalen Moore, the state’s leading scorer and one of the top 25 on the all-time points list.
The Redskins bumped Moore both when he had the ball and when he was trying to get open, and had at least two defenders on Moore at all times.
Moore finished with a season-low 23 points, hitting just 5 of 22 shots from the field and uncharacteristically missing five free throws.
“We have not played a team that can run five guys at you like that, and they definitely forced Jalen out of his comfort zone,” Rady said. “We saw their best shot. Any time you get a guy from the surrounding Indianapolis area who gets the press that Jalen has gotten, they took that to heart and wanted to really play well here.”
Rady thought there were several teachable moments during the game that should be able to help his team the rest of the way.
“This was a great game for us to reinforce some of the things we tell them in practice all the time,” Rady said. “Balls are going to be stolen, you can’t make that pass and you have to come and meet the pass. Those are little things that you may get away with all year, but tonight they couldn’t.”
The Redskins jumped out to leads of 9-2 and 14-5 in the first quarter, before a Wilkes basket cut the deficit to 14-7. Manual then took off on an 8-0 run, getting points from four different players.
The Redskins led 22-12 after one quarter and scored the first four points of the second quarter before the Clovers had a rally. A Moore free throw, two from Watts and a Nick Winders putback of a Moore miss cut the gap to 26-17 with 54:5 left in the half.
Manual then began finding 6-8 junior Jalen Johnson, who scored six straight points on a pair of free throws, a thundering dunk and another layup to give his team more breathing room.
Manual took a 42-25 lead to halftime, increasing that edge to 53-29 and eventually 64-37 after three quarters.
The fourth quarter saw Manual get 10 points from Pack in extending its lead to the final margin.
“They are well coached, and hopefully if we play a team like this somewhere down the road it will help us to prepare for that,” Rady said. “If we come up against this again, we may look at having someone else bring the ball up the floor or giving Jalen some rest.
“This game was definitely going to be a learning experience,” he added. “What we do with it ... time will tell.”
The loss was Cloverdale’s first on its homecourt this season, and is only the team’s second loss of 2018. The Clovers had won two straight games and eight of their last nine outings.
The Clovers will face a distinctly different opponent tonight at Shakamak. The Lakers average 25 points per game fewer than Manual.
Cloverdale will then close out the regular season on Tuesday with an emotional contest at Rockville, which will be the final game for the Rox in the Rock-a-Dome before the impending consolidation moves home games to Turkey Run.
MANUAL (78) — Johnson 12-18 5-5 30, Pack 8-13 2-2 18, Hankston 4-6 2-2 12, McNair 2-3 0-0 4, Houston 0-1 0-0 0, Alquirashy 6-7 0-0 12, McGaughey 0-1 0-0 0, Barnett 1-2 0-0 2, Abdulmumin 0-0 0-0 0, Godfrey 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 33-53 FG, 9-9 FT, 78 TP
CLOVERDALE (46) — Moore 5-22 13-18 23, Wilkes 4-7 3-5 11, Winders 1-3 1-2 3, J.Kelley 0-2 0-0 0, Watts 3-6 2-2 8, N.Kelley 0-0 0-0 0, Miller 0-0 1-2 1. Totals 13-40 FG, 17-24 FT, 46 TP
Manual 22 20 22 14 — 78
Cloverdale 12 13 12 9 — 46
3-point shooting — Manual 3-8 (Johnson 1-4, Pack 0-1, Hankston 2-2, Houston 0-1), Cloverdale 3-14 (Moore 0-3, Wilkes 3-5, Winders 0-2, J.Kelley 0-2, Watts 0-2).