Stories from Saturday, November 17, 2018

North Putnam used a tough defensive effort to limit Greencastle to 22 first-half points in the second game of the Putnam County girls’ basketball tournament at South Putnam on Friday night. Thirteen turnovers limited the number of scoring opportunities the Cougars had, however, and the Tiger Cubs used a big second half to break open a tight game and record a deceiving 56-24 victory...

Class 6A Carmel 14, Valparaiso 10 Warren Central 27, Center Grove 20 Class 5A Decatur Central 27, Columbus East 24 Michigan City at New Palestine, today Class 4A Fort Wayne Dwenger 24, Mishawaka 6 Marion at Evansville Central, today Class 3A West Lafayette 27, Fort Wayne Luers 14...

The Cloverdale Clovers used a big third quarter and then held off a furious fourth-quarter South Putnam Eagle rally Friday night to win the opening game of the Girls’ Putnam County Classic, 59-54. “Particularly in the second half, we were able to do some things well defensively,” Cloverdale coach Matthew Langdon said as his team improved to 5-1 and will take on Greencastle in the championship game tonight. ...

Bryce Rector has not let his Greencastle team forget the 43-28 score from last year’s sectional championship game, showing the video from that game on the first night of practice this fall. Leading scorer Colin York was shut down by Lebanon that night, and the rest of the Tiger Cubs were unable to make up the difference...

If ever a team had the proverbial “target on its back,” it would be this year’s Cloverdale boys’ basketball team. The Clovers have won three straight sectional and county titles with a record of 61-22 during that stretch, but over the past two springs more than 4,000 points have walked across the stage at graduation with the departures of Cooper Neese and Jalen Moore...

North Putnam closed out the 2017-18 season strongly, winning its first two games of the South Putnam Sectional before falling to Cloverdale in the championship game. The Cougars suffered some pretty severe losses from that 10-16 team to graduation, including leading scorer and rebounder Elliot Gross and versatile guards Treyton Smith and Caleb Duncan...

DePauw has had three straight losing seasons since having winning records each year from 2006 through 2015, and the Tigers are looking to get back over the .500 mark this time around. The top two scorers from last year’s 11-15 squad graduated (David Vogel and Jack Vandemerkt), leaving the leading returning scorer honors with sophomore forward Josh Hall...

This year is the one that South Putnam’s strong senior class has been waiting to arrive. Now that it’s here, they need to fulfill the potential seen in them when they broke into varsity competition as freshmen. “We have a lot of confidence in this group as both leaders and players,” coach Greg Dean said. “They are guys who are vocal and doing things the right way. We have a lot of guys who have gotten a lot of minutes and games played at the varsity level...