Lauren Sandrock knew that the Center Grove player she was defending probably wasn’t getting the ball in this situation; down by one with 2.6 seconds left, the Trojans were going to try to get it to senior Mary Wilson for the game-winning shot.
So Sandrock gambled, and it paid off. The Franklin senior tipped Center Grove’s inbounds pass away to help her team hang on for a 30-29 victory in a battle between the county’s top two girls basketball teams.
“I knew that they would probably look for (Wilson),” Sandrock said. “I saw the inbounder look up and lob it, and I just kind of went and got it.”
The Class 4A No. 8 Grizzly Cubs (13-1) beat the Trojans for the first time since November 2010, ending a 14-game series losing streak. And they did it by essentially beating Center Grove at its own game.
“Everyone likes to talk about our shooting, and everybody likes to talk about our offense,” Franklin coach Josh Sabol said, “but I don’t think our defense and rebounding get enough credit. I think we proved tonight that we can win scoring 70 points, we can win scoring 30 points, and I think that’s the mark of a great team — you can win multiple ways.”
The win certainly didn’t come easily. Franklin had a seemingly safe 28-16 lead after Lauren Klem hit a 3-pointer from the right corner with 42 seconds left in the third quarter, but the Grizzly Cubs — who came in fifth in the state at 68.5 points per game — scored just two the rest of the way as the Trojans (9-7) nibbled away at the deficit.
Mary Wilson hit a 3 late in the third for Center Grove, and Emily Karr had a nice hustle sequence to open the fourth when she hit a free throw, rebounded her own miss on the second and found Aubrie Booker for a layup to make it a six-point game.
Booker eventually cut the deficit to 30-27 on a three-point play with 53.7 seconds left, and the freshman followed with a steal that led to a pair of Kaho Takeda free throws with 36.6 ticks on the clock. Center Grove had to commit three fouls to put Franklin in the bonus before Klem — who had yet to attempt a varsity free throw — missed the front end of a one-and-one.
That gave the Trojans an opportunity to steal the win, but Sandrock’s heads-up play on the defensive end erased any chance of buzzer-beating heroics.
Shots were difficult to come by at both ends in the early going, with the Grizzly Cubs holding a slim 5-4 lead more than five minutes in. But a corner 3 by Klem began a run of seven straight Franklin points to end the first quarter.
Center Grove got back to within three, 15-12, on a back-door layup by Karr with 4:06 remaining in the half, but Kuryn Brunson helped Franklin regain command down the stretch, hitting a pair of free throws, feeding Megan Thompson for a basket and then scoring on a drive with seven seconds on the clock to build the home side’s cushion back to nine going into the break.
Brunson had a hand in all but two of Franklin’s first-half points, and the junior finished the night with 12 points, four rebounds, six assists and four steals.
Klem added nine points for Franklin, while Wilson led Center Grove with 10 and Booker had seven.
“Brunson, we all know she’s a really good player,” Trojans coach Kevin Stuckmeyer said. “Everybody knows that, and she knows it, and … she kind of controlled the game, and then their other players play their role real well. I just thought they made us feel uncomfortable and we didn’t respond to that.
“It might have been a low-scoring game, but I feel like they felt comfortable at both ends. … Maybe the scoreboard doesn’t show that, but they had open looks that they missed and still beat us by one.”
The Trojans were able to keep the game competitive with some solid perimeter defense, but they couldn’t establish any sort of rhythm offensively. Turnovers were a big part of the problem — Center Grove committed nine in the first half to Franklin’s two, with three of those coming on illegal screens.
These two teams had been expected to face one another in the finals of the Johnson County tournament back in November, but the Grizzly Cubs had to pull out before the semifinal round due to a quarantine.
After Tuesday’s game, though, the expectation is that there will be a rematch in the postseason.
“That’s what we talked about in the locker room,” Sabol said. “We’re going to see them again in a month, so we’ve got to get a heck of a lot better if we’re going to see them again in sectionals.”
