Cloverdale dominates Tiger Cubs for county title

Monday, November 19, 2018
Cloverdale celebrates its Putnam County championship on Saturday night.
Banner Graphic/JOEY BENNETT

Considering they barely escaped a first-round matchup with South Putnam, the Cloverdale Clovers did not exactly put themselves in the favorite’s position for the Putnam County girls’ championship game against four-time defending champion Greencastle on Saturday night.

Yet when the ball was thrown up for the opening tip, the Clovers controlled the game from start to finish and wound up with a 60-41 victory.

The Clovers won the county title for the first time since Bruce Cook coached them to their second straight win in the 2007-08 season.

Clover standout Tori Combs scored on a putback three minutes into the game to give the Clovers their first lead at 6-4, and they would never trail again.

Cloverdale led 10-7 after one quarter, and still led 18-15 midway through the second period when a play that typified the Clover effort provided a boost of energy.

Madison Shoemaker, who had all five of her points in the second quarter, hit the first free throw of a two-shot opportunity. She missed the second one, but rebounding machine Lakkain Price snagged the rebound and scored on a putback to double the Clover lead to 21-15.

Junior Kassie Wade hit a 3-pointer with 18 seconds left in the half to give her team a 27-19 lead at intermission.

Greencastle coach Tod Windlan saw plays like that happen far too often for his liking.

“My hat is off to Cloverdale,” Windlan said. “Not only did they want to win, but they played hard and they played well. They just out-toughed us, and when you give up offensive rebounds on free throws so many times that’s just a gut-check.”

Windlan was disappointed his team did not play hard for the entire game.

“The bottom line was that they wanted to win the game more than Greencastle wanted to win the game,” Windlan said. “I’ve coached for 15 years, and I’ve never had a team to quit. Our team quit in this game, late in the fourth quarter, and that’s totally unacceptable. We play to the horn; that’s what #RP32 [a Windlan saying] is all about, relentless pressure for 32 minutes regardless of what the score is.”

Cloverdale coach Matthew Langdon was understandably upbeat after winning his first county title in eight attempts.

But he was much happier for his players.

“You just can’t talk enough about what a team effort this was,” Langdon said. “For some of the girls to be in this situation and not turn the ball over very much was outstanding. In the past, we would have made a lot of turnovers in such a high-pressure situation.”

The heroines were plenty for the Clovers:

• Combs, who has averaged a double-double in scoring and rebounding for most of her career, hit those numbers again with 20 points and 10 rebounds;

• Leading scorer Sammie Shrum was held without a shot in the first half due to some foul trouble, but came through with seven points in the final two quarters;

• Wade was a deadly marksman from the outside, hitting four of 11 3-pointers and adding another basket for 14 points;

• Hailey Thomas not only ran the show at point guard, but hit four straight free throws in the final three minutes to help seal the win;

Cloverdale’s Lakkain Price blocks the shot of Greencastle’s Ella Shields in the championship.
Banner Graphic/JOEY BENNETT

• Price grabbed eight rebounds and added eight points; and

• Shoemaker added five rebounds to her five points.

Another Wade trey with 5:33 left in the third period put Cloverdale up 35-23, before the Tiger Cubs mounted their only serious rally.

Ella Shields started a 10-0 run with a basket, and Allison Stevens — whose time was again limited in the first half by foul trouble — added a pair of free throws and a basket.

Shields added another pair of free throws and Jalyn Duff hit a basket, and in a stretch of a little over two minutes the Cubs had cut the lead to two at 35-33.

Combs hit a basket to double her team’s lead to 37-33 with 2:46 left in the period, and sat out the final 1:41 to get some rest.

The rest of the Clovers not only held their ground, but extended the lead.

Shrum hit a basket with 42.1 seconds left in the period and was fouled on the play. She missed the free throws, but Price got the rebound and kicked it out to Wade for yet another trey and a 42-33 lead at the final stop.

“Hailey sat out quite a bit in the second half with foul trouble also,” said Langdon, noting that Shrum also missed a lot of time and Combs — a post player by trade — did remarkably well as the team’s third-string point guard. “We got big contributions from a lot of people. It’s neat. These girls have been waiting a long time for a high school county title, and they got it done.”

Langdon acknowledged his team did not have an excellent game on Friday, crediting South Putnam with a lot of its problems, but was glad to see his team learn from that outing.

“We have talked a lot this year about what we can learn from each game and take forward,” he said. “We thought that we were able to learn how to win a close game on Friday, and that really helped us. That’s a good Greencastle team we beat, and it took a great effort.”

Langdon knows his team cannot rest long on its laurels, hosting a tough Terre Haute South team tonight with a long way to go in the season.

“This was a great win for our kids and our community,” he said. “This is one of the biggest crowds we’ve ever had. We have to be able to go out and find out how we can do this every night, and not be content.

“We’re definitely going to enjoy it, but we have to go on from here.”

Windlan’s first Greencastle team had started the season strongly, winning road games against Cascade and Edgewood and then beating defending conference champion Owen Valley in overtime.

The Cubs did not have Shields when they lost to defending sectional champion Benton Central by nine points, but rebounded to rout Southmont by 44 points prior to the county tourney.

In that event, though, the Cubs were like a bottle or can of soda left open for a week. They lacked the fizz they had in the first two weeks.

“We definitely are going to make some changes,” Windlan said. “It’s a long season. This is a huge setback, because you would think in a county final game you would have heart and compete, and we just didn’t do that.

“Combs just physically dominated the game, and we let numerous players on their team beat us with their right hands when the scouting report clearly told them to make them go to their left,” he added. “Mentally, we were out of it. Physically, we were outmatched.

“We got outplayed and out-coached, and we just got beat.”

Windlan agreed that this could be the kind of “wake-up call” his team needed.

“I told our coaching staff on Friday that I didn’t like how we were playing then,” he said. “We can’t execute anything offensively. This is the most stagnant team offensively I’ve ever had. Fortunately we have a long time to turn it around.”

CLOVERDALE (60) — Combs 8-10 3-4 20, Shrum 2-4 2-3 7, Thomas 1-7 4-5 6, Price 3-3 2-4 8, Wade 5-12 0-0 14, Shoemaker 1-3 3-6 5, Lewellen 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 20-40 FG, 14-22 FT, 60 TP

GREENCASTLE (41) — Stevens 5-6 3-4 13, Duff 2-9 1-4 6, E.Shields 4-8 3-5 11, Stoffregen 2-5 5-6 9, Shuee 0-2 0-0 0, M.Shields 0-5 2-2 2, Ray 0-0 0-0 0, Doan 0-1 0-0 0, Rodgers 0-0 0-0 0, Zellers 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 13-37 FG, 14-21 FT, 41TP

Cloverdale1017151860
Greencastle71214841

3-point shooting — Cloverdale 6-20 (Combs 1-2, Shrum 1-3, Thomas 0-4, Wade 4-11,), Greencastle 1-11 (Duff 1-3, Stoffregen 0-3, Shuee 0-1, M.Shields 0-3, Zellers 0-1). Turnovers — Cloverdale 13, Greencastle 15.