Indiana HS Basketball Tourney running thread...

hmm, my next guess was gonna be Kidd and/or McCurdy.

 

Probably one of them communistic types that likes daylight savings time, too.

 

Digging this up for the 2009 edition... the one game semistates were today.

A personal note, despite being an Indiana high school basketball nerd, I'd never attended a semistate until I covered one today. In the olden pre-class days, I'd just watch multiple semistates on TV, while once I was in high school/college/until today, I preferred to watch NCAA tourney hoops instead (though I always drop everything to attend the state finals a week later).

Here are the games...let's hear some picks from those with (or maybe even without) ties to the Hoosier state. And, as always, a plea for no bitching about the class basketball tournament. It sucks, but it's here and all the arguments are stale...but the quality of basketball is still good.


Class A: No. 3 Triton (24-2) vs. No. 1 Jac-Cen-Del (24-2)
Triton won the title last year with a bunch of seniors. But they've quickly reloaded and won a very controversial regional game against Bowman Academy last week. They followed that up with a win today against everyone's least favorite small school team, Lafayette Central Catholic.

Meanwhile, JCD overcomes some good old fashioned Southern Indiana small school stall ball to win 38-32 against North Daviess. It will be the first finals appearance for the Eagles, who seem to always have a fair amount of talent but not the ability to play well in the tournament.

Vonnegutnaked2's pick: Going with Triton. I think they're more tested (JCD had a waltz to Conseco excluding today's win). Meanwhile, Triton has already beaten LCC, Bowman and had a close loss to 3A finalist Rochester in the final weeks. Knocking off JCD would make them the first Class A team to repeat as champs.

Class 2A: No. 2 Ft. Wayne Luers (21-4) vs. Brownstown Central (20-6)
Luers, coached by former Kentucky standout James Blackmon, is headlined by junior DeShaun Thomas, Ohio State super recruit. Facing triple and quadruple teams, Thomas made enough plays to help Luers to the Class 2A title last year. Luers breezed today, but has already beaten No. 3 Bluffton and No. 1 Tipton (at Tipton) along the way.

Brownstown is benefiting from the reverse Sports Illustrated jinx. My paper made the decision to stop covering them as an outlying team this year. What do they do? They have a great year in football and basketball. They lost one game short of the state championship game on the gridiron and they get to Conseco in basketball. They benefited today from an injury to Winchester's Tyler Koch (a great small school player who had a really rough senior year marred by other injuries and suspension).

Vonnegutnaked2's pick: Luers. Thomas will make a run at Damon Bailey's scoring record before it's all said and done and should easily be the front runner for Mr. Basketball next year. People will gripe that he's only won at 2A and all the old white honkies hate his attitude, but dude can play and he should put on another good show on Saturday at Conseco.

(break for beer and fried food with friends)

Class 3A: No. 7 Rochester (23-3) vs. No. 1 Princeton (28-0)
I know next to nothing about Rochester except that they're the Zebras. My best friend used to date a girl from there in college and she didn't know how to pump gas. She was the single most helpless person I ever met. She was also a cheerleader there. Therefore, I think I'm going to pick against them.

Princeton is really good. Their guards are quick and get to the rim. Their bigs are good defenders (when they want to be). They'll also press and press and press. They can be beaten by zone defenses, since they don't have many lights out shooters. That could be an advantage for Rochester, especially since teams tend to shoot poorly in the state finals.

Vonnegutnaked2's pick: Princeton. I think the Tigers are good, plus I think having cheerleading alums who were completely helpless equals bad karma.

Class 4A: No. 6 Ft. Wayne Snider (25-1) vs. No. 1 Bloomington South (25-0)
Snider's lone loss came to Luers. Best player is head coach Ray Sims' son. Speaking of Sims, a former coach told me today that this Snider team must be very good, to overcome the 20-point deficit that having Sims on the sideline puts them in each night. That might be a little harsh, a little. Still, must say I was impressed with the way Snider went into the Marion Regional and easily disposed of Anderson and Marion.

Bloomington South has the probable Mr. Basketball: Jordan Hulls, who Coach Second Coming has recruited to stay in Bloomington and play for the Hoosiers. Bloomington South beat Detroit Country Day last month and pretty much rolled everybody until the last week of tournament play. They beat New Albany in a pretty good regional game and survived against Franklin Central (whose improvement was remarkable) today. There's a ton of pressure on South, who has been pegged as the favorite for seemingly the whole season.

Vonnegutnaked2's pick: I'll take South. But I do so nervously. Both of these teams are first timers at the state level...something rarely seen at the 4A level. Bloomington South had a ton of expectations last year and choked badly. They'll be a lot of eyes there to see them next week, especially Hulls.

 

Class A: The most interesting develop, to me anyway, is how charter schools are beginning to make noise in the tourney (like Gary's Bowman Academy) while potentially sucking all the talent away from the neighborhood high schools. It's like the complaints Indianapolis schools made about Attucks when it started winning titles in the 1950s, except that black kids were sent there to segregate the school district. Plus, at the lower levels you also had a shitload of little private schools who joined the IHSAA as a way to increase their exposure, realizing they now weren't going to get thumped in a sectional anymore by a humongous city school. (Heritage Christian in Indianapolis has taken the most advantage).

So, apropros of nothing, I'll pick Triton.

2A: Former Kentucky standout James Blackmon? Don't you mean former MARION standout James Blackmon? This is an Indiana basketball thread!

My pick is Luers. Is DeShaun Thomas really the next LeBron, as the hype goes?

3A: Princeton, because it'll back-door you to death. (Har har)

4A: Lawrence North should be here, if it didn't gack on its own fumes against Franklin Central. Looks like Jack Keefer is going to have to step up his recruiting next year. (The Lawrence North coach, who has great teams is often accused, justifiably, of finding ways to get players to "move" into his district.) If the coach's son sucks, you pick against him, so Bloomington High School South wins. NOT Bloomington South High School!

 

Not caring if I out myself, I grew up in one of those Grant County towns that had a school that fed into the Marion Sectional. I will never acknowledge any stars, past or present, that played in the Billllll Gaarreeeennnnn Athaaaaalettttickkkk Areeeennnaaaaa (said in my best Wade Weaver voice)

 

You're not one of those people who don't shut up about Monte Towe, are you?

(For the uninitiated, Monte Towe's Oak Hill team beat Marion in Marion to win the sectional, about the only time Marion didn't run over everybody. It'll always be the biggest thing to happen to Converse, Ind. Which, by the way, is a GREAT old-school sounding basketball dateline.)

 

My wife's a Brownstown Central graduate. I got married there. Love that little town.

They'll get fucking hammered next weekend by Luers.

And Princeton is Bad.Ass. They'e gone undefeated and beaten some fine teams this season. Notably, Washington twice. And they've really not broken a sweat yet, far as I can tell.

I'll take Jac-Cen-Del and B-South in the other two less important games.

 

Ouch. Now you're really hurting my soul. I played three years of varsity basketball and Oak Hill beat us three years in a row in the sectional, including an overtime game my sophomore year and by five in the sectional title game my senior year.

Nope, went to Madison-Grant...a 1969 consolidation that actually won three Marion Sectionals...though people always seem to remember those Oak Hill teams more (I guess 5-foot-nothing point guards who go on to play in the ACC do that).

In those last years before class, M-G kicked Marion's ass (Bill Green's last year) in the sectional, before losing a heartbreaker to Kokomo in the regional final. Entering that 96-97 season, Madison-Grant (led by an Indiana All Star who went on to play in the Valley) was viewed, along with Batesville, as the small school that had the best shot at making a run. But M-G lost by six to Marion, led by a goofy freshman named Zach Randolph, in the sectional finals.

 

I was a high school hoops geek today like I grew up ... Lafayette semistate on the TV, Seymour semistate on one computer, listening to another webcast of the Warsaw semistate on another ... (and getting updates from Southport while we were at it). I used to do that when I was a kid and could watch the Hinkle & Lafayette semistates on TV and pick up the other two on radio.

I never got to attend a one-class regional or semistate, but they would've been pretty cool. The class regionals are pretty close to what the old days were like. The semistates are in high school gyms (albeit big ones) instead of college arenas now.

(Did Blackmon play in the "Bill Green Athletic Arena," or was Marion still playing its home games in the Coliseum? I can't remember when they built the new place ... only remember it was pretty tacky that they named it for Green while he was still coaching there).

While avoiding getting into a class basketball diatribe ...

Class A: Triton vs. Jac-Cen-Del. Triton is the consolidation of Bourbon, Tippecanoe (the Police Dogs) and Etna Green. Could they have come up with a slightly less boring name for the consolidated school? Jac-Cen-Del takes its names from the three townships that feed in (the towns were Osgood & Napoleon). Triton is the defending 1A champs, although as Bob pointed out, the big development in Class A is the proliferation of the charter schools and small religious schools that have begun to take over. Triton is the beneficiary of some controversy -- Gary Bowman was said charter school, essentially amassed a citywide all-star team and thumped everyone along the way. In the regional semifinal, their leading scorer gets two techs -- one for hanging on the rim, one for slapping the backboard. 2 techs = ejection = one-game suspension. Triton beats Bowman by two that night, and immediately there are plenty of cries from NW Indiana about how the IHSAA constantly discriminates against The Region, that racism played into things, et al. Triton then beat the premier 1A power -- Lafayette Central Catholic -- by three today in a great game. I see Triton repeating ... their kids have been there before.

The team JCD beat today probably shouldn't have survived its sectional ... North Daviess was beaten on a last-second shot by #2 Barr-Reeve that the official initially signaled good, then waved off. Had BR won, there's a good chance they'd be playing at Conseco instead of JCD.

2A: FW Luers vs. Brownstown Central
Luers has 2010 Mr. Basketball DeShaun Thomas, who could threaten to take Damon Bailey's spot atop Indiana's career scoring list next year (heresy!). Luers is the defending champ ... Brownstown is an unranked football school that has managed to get hot at the right time. This game probably won't be close ... the only team in 2A capable of challenging Luers was the Tipton team led by IU recruit Derek Elston, which Luers beat 60-53 in the regional (on Tipton's home floor).

3A: Princeton vs. Rochester
This game will be interesting. Princeton is unbeaten, ranked #1 and has a balanced, deep team that likes to swarm you. Rochester is a team full of guys who don't turn the ball over, don't miss open shots and will put any kind of a lead on the deep freeze, so they're difficult to play if you get behind. This could be the best game of the day.

4A: Bloomington South vs. FW Snider
These two teams have one loss between them ... and it was Snider's loss to DeShaun Thomas and Luers. Bloomington South has essentially mowed through the tourney field -- beating unbeaten New Albany, a pretty good Terre Haute South team by 27, and then Purdue recruit Patrick Bade's Franklin Central team today. Indiana recruit Jordan Hulls -- the likely 2009 Mr. Basketball -- leads a deep, balanced South team. Incidentally, this is only the second time since class basketball started in 1998 that an Indianapolis-area team has not been in the 4A final.

 

M-G has one of the best nicknames around ... the Argylls. Reportedly named because some local guy promised the band argyll socks (which were a big deal back then) in their uniforms if they named the school that. They did ... the socks never arrived. (predecessor schools ... the Summitville Goblins, and the Fairmount Quakers, the latter of which had a bespectacled guard in the late 1940s named James Dean).

 

Another development in the small division -- now that Indianapolis is reopening high schools as magnet schools, old names like Washington (George McGinnis' old school) and Attucks are coming back. Very cool.

 

In Kentucky's still-one-class tourney, Elliott County got beat today in the semis. They were the small mountain school that was profiled by Pat Forde on espn.com last month.