Clovers start coincides with historic '82 team

Emerging from the locker room Saturday night, Cloverdale coach Pat Rady was keeping a positive face. He'd just talked to his disappointed players and tried to explain that the first loss of the year isn't the same as the last.

The Clovers were understandably blue, beaten by a team that played better but not necessarily a better team. Still, Rady said, starting 7-0, now 7-1, is nothing to be upset about.

Those seven wins to start the year were the longest such streak for Cloverdale since 1982, CHS athletic director J.J. Wade said. For a program with the basketball history Cloverdale has, becoming the first team in 30 years to reach any plateau is an accomplishment.

That 1981-82 team went all the way to the regional championship game, starting 24-0, before it lost.

With a roster of record-setting Clovers like Indiana Hall of Famer Chad Tucker and Jerry Neese, both juniors that year, Cloverdale hung with a much bigger school from Vigo County in the regional game.

The Clovers had a chance to win, trailing by two with the clock ticking down, Neese, a dead-eye shooter, caught the ball on the wing. He was seemed to have room to shoot, but ...

"We had a player that came out of nowhere and blocked him with about two seconds to go in the game," Rady said.

The "we" is Terre Haute South, where Rady was coaching at the time.

Rady says he doesn't remember that game too well, just that "it was nip and tuck and (Cloverdale) had a shot to win it."

He doesn't remember the shooter, whose son Cooper is now a freshman starting for the Clovers. He can't really even check the video. The game was recorded on film, back before he started recording games on VHS tapes.

He also remembers the final play a little differently than the Clovers.

There was a bit of controversy about that block. Cloverdale fans thought Neese was mugged and it should have been a foul.

Rady saw it differently.

"It seemed like, to me, there was a gap," he said "I thought the ball had left his hand."

The clock ran out, the game ended and Rady's Braves advanced to the semi-state and a game he remembers much more vividly, an overtime loss against Evansville Bosse, which featured a trio of D1 recruits.

The following year Cloverdale and Terre Haute South met again in the regional tournament and the Clovers avenged the previous defeat.

"The year we won, they might have been the better team," Rady said. "The year they won, we might have been the better team."

It was the third regional championship in the school's history, and the most recent. It also provides an important example for this season's team to follow.

The 1982-83 Clover-dale team learned from its loss the year before and became one of the best in school history. The loss on Saturday to Tri-West wasn't as devastated as one in the postseason, but if the current Clovers can learn from it and use it for motivation, they could add to the history of Cloverdale.

That's just what Rady wants.

"Cloverdale has got some great tradition," he said. "We're trying to revive some of that."