INDIANAPOLIS
What started out as a promising season for the Greenwood Christian boys basketball team ended abruptly Tuesday night.
Tindley, ranked eighth in Class A, toppled the formerly ranked Cougars in the Indianapolis Lutheran Sectional opener, 56-46, and ending a season clouded by potential Indiana High School Athletic Association violations.
It’s a long way from the heights and glories of last year, when the Cougars were 24-1 ranked No. 1 in the state for most of the season.
The Cougars were playing for the first time in three weeks thanks to the cancellation of their last two games.
Greenwood Christian coach Jonny Marlin offered no excuses, though.
“(COVID-19) definitely affected us, but it also affected everyone else in the state,” Marlin said. “We have to tip our hats to what Tindley did. I thought they did a great job of setting the tone.”
That tone though took more than two minutes as neither team could find the mark, missing shot after shot. Tindley finally did score at the 4:55 point of the first quarter and ran off to a 6-0 lead before GCA sophomore Blake Shewmaker hit a trey. By that time four minutes had elapsed, and the tone was set by the Tigers, who never trailed in the contest.
Still, the Cougars wouldn’t allow Tindley to break away and were definitely in the game, trailing by only five, 22-17 at halftime thanks to a 3-pointer before the buzzer by senior Styles McCorkle.
However, momentum didn’t really sway towards the Cougars. True, Greenwood Christian did close the gap to four early in the third quarter, but an 8-2 run by Tindley but the Cougars in a hole they were never able to dig out of.
In the final quarter, McCorkle’s 3-pointer at 2:28 closed the gap to six, and the momentum seemed to be finally going the Cougars’ way thanks to two botched Tiger free throws, but even after Marlin called a timeout with 2:14 left to draw up a plan, Greenwood Christian could only manage two more points, both on free throws, while Tindley ended the game the way they started it, with another 6-0 run to end it.
“They were aggressive,” Marlin said. “I don’t think we shot as well as we wanted to, both from the 3-point line and free throw line. That’s going to happen, and you have to find a way to win.”
McCorkle put the team on his shoulders, scoring 26 points, or 57% of the Cougars total. Shewmaker was the only other Cougar in double figures with 12.
The Tigers (14-9) were led by sophomore Jayden Pinkston’s 22 points. Junior 6-7 forward Aaron Humphrey came off the bench to score 14.
GCA (12-8) still had a good season, with wins against such highly regarded opponents as Indianapolis Lutheran and University, and an impressive six-game winning streak that stretched from January to early February. During that streak, the Cougars outscored their opponents by an average of nearly 20 points.
The Cougars will have some questions to answer on and off the court before next season, but Marlin wasn’t focused on any of that on Tuesday.
“Honestly, I’m not thinking about next season,” he said. “This was about the guys. Some of them played their last basketball game, and that’s tough. I just want to focus on them and see what I can do for them at this point.”
