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County girls’ basketball teams get chance to play one another at South Putnam summer league, branch out at summer camps
South Putnam’s summer basketball league saw all four county schools attend at times during the three-week schedule with games being played on Tuesday and Thursday nights at Central Elementary and South Putnam High School.
All four coaches had a chance to see their teams play against several local schools, including Cascade, Speedway, Covenant Christian, Southmont, Crawfordsville and others and provided observations on what they saw during their first chance to see their returning squads and incoming freshmen together on the floor.
Greencastle
While not officially head coach at the time, Lenihan said seeing the returning members of the semistate team from the prior year and incoming freshmen was invigorating.
“It was awesome being a part of the league and getting to play basketball this summer,” Lenihan said. “We didn’t have a lot of practice time prior to the league, so we weren’t running more than a play or two, but we just wanted the girls to play ball and not having to go to set spots all the time.
“We wanted the girls to play as a team and as a group, which was cool to see. We’ve got some spots to replace but we just wanted to go out, play ball and the girls really enjoyed playing.”
South Putnam
The Eagles, host of the summer league, bring back much of the squad from the 2022-23 season and will be bolstered by an incoming freshman group that won middle school county titles the past two years.
Head coach Brian Gardner said the girls were quickly beginning to gel and got extra reps in at the D-One Basketball Camp in Ft. Wayne.
“Summer was really good for our team,” Gardner said. “Adding some new pieces with younger players is a good transition to the season.
“Our summer league was a great success in being able to play several teams and get a good feel for each other. We finished this month off by going to the D-One camp where we played some great competition with teams we will never see like Valparaiso and Penn, along with some teams out of Ohio.”
North Putnam
The Cougars also bring back nearly the entire squad from the 2022-23 season, many of whom are still underclassmen and will also have a full summer under head coach Craig Franklin, who enters his second year as head coach.
Franklin said the girls used their time in the league well by playing with tempo rather than set offense, a trait that helped during their time at a Purdue team camp earlier this summer.
“We did really well at the summer league,” Franklin said. “It’s good for us to do a couple nights a week locally, though we had to use a couple of middle school players for our JV team, something we hope we can round out once school starts.
“We do have a new player that moved in from Tri-West in Jasmine Duval, who played freshman ball for them but is a basketball girl, has a great IQ and fits into the group well. We’ve worked on a few little things like ball handling and passing; we didn’t use any sets as we wanted to play fast, get up and down the floor and create advantages in transition and off the dribble, something that was really good for the girls.
“Sometimes we played too fast but we wanted them to get used to that kind of pace,” Franklin added. “Out time at Purdue’s summer camp was good for us too as we had to play some much bigger schools in New Albany, Whiteland, Lebanon and Angola.
“We won a couple of games and lost to the bigger schools but it was really good to see that competition and size. We had some girls play AAU basketball as well and the difference in their game is really great to see.”
Cloverdale
The Clovers were not as involved as the other county schools, having spent time at Clinton Central and a team camp at Vincennes University, but did get a chance to play at the league with a squad similar in size to last year, though head coach James Wade said it’s been difficult to get everyone together at the same time.
“It’s going to take some time to get the girls to play together and learn about each other,” Wade said. “We’re not quite there yet, though they’re working hard this summer to shore some things up on defense from last year.
“We’re still trying to see what pieces we can put together to succeed on the floor. I’d have liked for us to have had better attendance during the summer but we’ve had several injuries from spring and from playing that haven’t allowed us to have the same five or six girls on the floor at the same time to see what we can work with.”