Center Grove’s Jalen Bundy shoots the ball during Friday’s sectional semifinal against Bloomington South.
Chris Williams | For the Daily Journal
Bloomington South scored the game’s first basket Friday night, which paled in comparison to Center Grove accounting for the next 12.
As starts go, the one the Class 4A No. 4 Trojans peeled out to was likely their best of the season in what resulted in a 62-39 semifinal victory.
Panthers coach J.R. Holmes, the state’s career leader in victories with 753 over his 53 seasons, was never a threat to add to his total. Center Grove saw to it, early, often and convincingly.
“I thought our defensive intensity was fantastic,” Trojans coach Zach Hahn, whose 22-2 squad moves to tonight’s championship game against Bloomington North (17-5). “We talked the last two days about how this is a team you have to guard all their actions.
“(Bloomington South) plays a different style of basketball than a lot of Indiana teams because they’re so set-oriented, and a screening offense, which is much different than just ball screen and (isolation). But I thought we did a great job of taking away all their stuff.”
A jumper by senior guard Marcus Ankney touched off a 25-0 Center Grove scoring flurry that involved six different players scoring and concluded at 6:19 of the second quarter on senior Garrett Messer’s fadeaway baseline jumper.
By the time Holmes called his first timeout at 4:15 of the first stanza, the Trojans led on the scoreboard, 8-2, in large part because of a 7-1 advantage in rebounds; the Panthers (16-9) committed five of their 13 turnovers over the first eight minutes.
Bloomington South outscored Hahn’s team, 13-2, over the final 5:35 of the first half, closing to a more respectable 27-15 tally at intermission.
“We’ve got to keep playing,” Hahn said. “The fouls were 9-2 at one point. When you’re up 20 and the fouls are 9-2, that doesn’t feel very good. You would think you were getting some of those calls. It didn’t work out that way, and, honestly, I thought because of our aggressiveness, that’s why we got some of them.
“We were a little out of position. We reached a couple of times. I told them we have to play through it, and be a little bit smarter on shot selection.”
The Panthers opened the third period with a hoop, making it a 10-point spread. But Center Grove countering with 14-4 scoring burst made Bloomington South’s chances at continuing its season even less likely.
Ankney led the Trojans with 16 points, followed by 14 from junior center Will Spellman and 13 from junior point guard Jalen Bundy. Spellman and Bundy went for eight and six rebounds, respectively, as Center Grove won that battle, 33-25.
Vincent Moutardier, a 6-foot-3 sophomore wing for Bloomington South, was the game’s top scorer with 20 points.
There have been times this season in which Hahn wasn’t satisfied with the way his team started games. Perhaps Center Grove started a new trend with how it performed against the Panthers.
“We started off with fire, energy. Our seniors came out and gave us a spark to be more aggressive,” Bundy said. “We know it’s win or go home now, so we have to come out with energy. We played aggressive. We played fast. We got stops and we got rebounds.”
