Greencastle pulls away in second half for county championship

The Greencastle seventh grade basketball team defeated South Putnam in the Putnam County Tournament. Members of the winning are Chase Chew, Ryan Coble, Tyler Lamb, Peyton Jones, Jacob Lewis, Brandon Gierke, Peyton Walker, Cole Edgar, Anthony Rossok, Zach Wilkerson, Brayden White, Jacob Sanders and Nathan Pearson.

GREENCASTLE -- With only have one practice in the last week, the Greencastle seventh grade boys team shook off the rust and defeated South Putnam 45-29 to capture the 2011 Putnam County championship.

"Every victory is a good win," GMS head coach Mark Lewis said with a laugh. "We had such a layoff with the snow days and missed some practice. I think we've had one hour practice in the last eight days, so it looked like it out there playing.

"Our kids sucked it up and hit some free throws down the stretch that kept us ahead of South Putnam," he added.

South Putnam head coach Ryan Gilman echoed Lewis' thoughts.

"They played hard. I give a lot of credit to Greencastle, they played hard and they played well, but I can't fault the effort of my guys. It didn't matter what the score was," he said.

Despite a rough shooting night, the Tiger Cubs were able to seize a small lead early and build on it the entire game. They had a four-point lead after one quarter and extended it to eight at the break.

Brandon Gierke led GMS with nine first half points. He was followed by Ryan Coble and Cole Edgar chipped in four points each. The Eagles were led by Grady McHugh's five points.

The third quarter saw Greencastle outscored South Putnam 10-8 and 7-5 in the final quarter. South Putnam continued to struggle with it shooting, but Gilman liked what he saw out his team.

"They never gave up," he said. "That was one of the things we talked about at halftime 'Hey, we don't give up. We're going to play with everything we got and we did that. In the long run that's what matters."

As the final buzzer sounded, the Greencastle's bench spilled over on to the floor as they line up to cut down the net.

Lewis has pleased that his teams stuck to its gameplan.

"It's good to be county champs. Our boys played hard and played good defense and that's what we ask of them.

At South Putnam

Greencastle 9 15 10 11 -- 45

South Putnam 5 11 6 7 -- 29

Individual Stats

GMS -- Gierke 14, Coble 10, Edger 6, Lewis 2, Wilkerson 5, Chew 3, White 1, Pearson 4.

South Putnam -- Wood 2, Camacho 5, McHugh 5, Wilderson 5, Masters 5, Rayce 3, Drawbaugh 4.