Franklin’s Kennedy Urban looks for a teammate after scooping up a loose ball during a game at Center Grove in November.
Daily Journal file photo
No matter how many different ways the IHSAA decided to reconfigure its postseason setup, this one felt unavoidable.
Center Grove and Franklin have been two of the best girls basketball teams in the state all season long, and a February meeting has become a staple of the cross-county rivalry over the last four years. Whether a sectional, regional or semistate matchup, the Trojans and Grizzly Cubs were bound to see one another sooner or later.
The showdown has never come this late in the calendar.
At high noon on Saturday, the two local powers will take the court at Southport Fieldhouse for a Class 4A semistate semifinal. Arguably the state’s best recent rivalry writing its final chapter inside perhaps the greatest of all the great Indiana high school gymnasiums.
Days before tipoff, it already feels like the stuff of future legend.
“It was bound to happen at some point,” Franklin senior guard Lauren Klem said. “It was just a matter of when.”
One of a few four-year starters in this matchup, Klem has been at the center of the rivalry since her freshman season. After her Grizzly Cubs missed the Johnson County tournament due to COVID contact tracing restrictions, they pulled out a narrow 30-29 win over Center Grove in January of 2021 and then beat the Trojans 45-36 to win the sectional championship on the way to a semistate appearance
In 2021-22, Franklin again won all three meetings on the way to a 4A state title game appearance — but all three were tight. A Scarlett Kimbrell 3-pointer with 27 seconds left propelled the Grizzly Cubs to a 40-37 victory in the county title game, then pulled out another last-minute win, 48-45, just a week and a half later. Franklin then won a sectional semifinal matchup, 56-49.
The current Franklin seniors ran their high school record against Center Grove to 6-0 with a 38-34 home win last regular season before the Trojans finally broke through with a 45-43 regional victory. Audrey Annee hit a 3-pointer in the final minute of overtime to put her team in front for good and punch CG’s first semistate ticket since 2007.
That victory also lifted a large mental weight off of the team’s shoulders and helped send them into this season with more confidence.
“We could kind of clear our heads and tell ourselves, ‘We can beat them,’” said Annee, another player who’s been part of the series all four years. “It’s not like every single game we’re going to lose regardless of how we play. So just focusing on the main things and knowing they’re beatable.”
Center Grove pulled out another overtime win, 54-47, in this year’s county championship game, rallying back from an early 16-5 deficit and holding the Grizzly Cubs scoreless during the extra session. The Trojans then stormed out to a 22-4 advantage in the regular-season rematch and were up 28-10 after the first period before Franklin dominated the remainder of the game en route to a 62-53 road win.
That remains the Trojans’ lone defeat of the season; they’ve won 19 straight since, including their last nine by double digits.
Franklin, meanwhile, reeled off 15 consecutive victories after the county defeat. A brief lull followed, with a home loss to Jennings County in the regular-season finale and surprisingly narrow sectional escapes against Shelbyville and host Whiteland — but last weekend’s 69-30 regional evisceration of Evansville North appears to have gotten the Grizzly Cubs back on track.
“We looked like the team we were earlier in the season,” Armstrong said.
“I think Saturday helped us gain a lot of momentum,” Klem added. “Just seeing some shots fall definitely helped.”
The Trojans were just as impressive in their regional performance, however, silencing a normally spirited Bedford North Lawrence crowd with a 48-27 beatdown. Both teams are coming in confident — but only one can move on to the final four.
Rankings, records and polls all point to Center Grove as the favorite, but after nine meetings — all decided by single digits, including two in overtime and four by a single possession — these two teams know each other too well to buy into any of that.
Despite the higher stakes, Trojans coach Kevin Stuckmeyer is trying to treat this game like any of the ones before it.
“You can’t get caught up in that noise,” he said. “You’ve got to just play the game and play the possession by possession. If you start to let that creep in, then yeah, the pressure starts to build.”
“I think this game’s going to be like all the others,” Armstrong agreed. “It’s going to be close, it’s going to be hard fought, it’s going to be back and forth, and it’s going to come down to who executes plays throughout the game — not just at one point, but throughout the game. We had a lead the first game (this season), they came back. They had a lead the second game, we came back. … I think those first two games show that both teams are capable, and that whoever probably plays and executes the best is going to win the game.”
That said, the senior-dominated makeup of both squads does add another layer of urgency to this 10th and final clash. Not only is the season ending for whichever team doesn’t win Saturday afternoon, but the decorated careers of several key players as well. Pushed to the back of the mind or not, it’s hard to make that reality vanish completely.
“I feel like this game definitely means the most out of all the times we’ve ever played them,” Center Grove senior Aubrie Booker said. “It gives us more of a focus. We just need to really lock in because our season could end, so it means a lot more.”
“It’s definitely really different knowing that we don’t have the option to say, ‘Oh, we still have next year,’” Kimbrell added from the other side. “But I think it’s fun; it adds more adrenaline.”
To a rivalry series that’s never, ever lacked for it. Buckle up.
IF YOU GO
Class 4A Southport Semistate
Lawrence Central (27-1) vs. Plainfield (18-7) 10 a.m.
Center Grove (26-1) vs. Franklin (24-3), noon
Championship, 8 p.m.
Admission: $12 per session, $20 full day; tickets online only (websites.eventlink.com/s/ihsaa/Tickets)
SCOUTING THE SEMISTATE
Players to watch: Center Grove — Audrey Annee, Lilly Bischoff, Aubrie Booker, Ava Grant, Rachel Wirts; Franklin — Erica Buening, Scarlett Kimbrell, Lauren Klem, Emma Sappenfield, Kennedy Urban, Brooklyn York; Lawrence Central — Laila Abdurraqib, Jaylah Lampley, Lola Lampley, Aniyah McKenzie; Plainfield — Peyton Benge, Hannah Menser, Ellison Stewart, Berkeley Williams
Sagarin ratings: Center Grove 100.44 (first in Indiana and Class 4A), Lawrence Central 99.56 (second overall and in 4A), Franklin 96.39 (ninth overall, eighth in 4A), Plainfield 88.34 (23rd overall, 19th in 4A)
Head to head: Center Grove split two games with Franklin (54-47 OT win, 62-53 loss), with each winning on the other’s home floor; Plainfield lost to both Center Grove (54-42 on Dec. 5) and Franklin (61-39 on Jan. 10). Lawrence Central has not played anyone else in the field.
Outlook: Another postseason, another Center Grove-Franklin showdown. The current Grizzly Cub seniors have played the Trojans nine times over their careers, including three postseason matchups. Franklin won the first six of those nine games and then lost the next two in overtime — one in a regional last year, one in this season’s county tournament final — before bouncing back with a 62-53 comeback win on the Trojans’ floor.
That, as it turns out, is Center Grove’s lone loss this season. Each side has proven capable of serving as the other’s kryptonite at times, though the matchups have been a bit higher-scoring this season than over the previous three. The Trojans tried to slow the Grizzly Cubs down in years past; this year, they seem far confident that they can trade baskets and come out ahead. Will that bet pay off on Saturday?
On the other side of the bracket, though nothing is guaranteed to play out as projected on paper, Lawrence Central is heavily favored to handle Plainfield in the early semifinal. The Bears are unbeaten against in-state competition, and their closest games in Indiana were three single-digit wins over Lawrence North (which lost by 17 at Center Grove on Dec. 16) and a 56-52 season-opening victory at Zionsville (which lost by five at Franklin a week later).
Basically, there are no sure things; this semistate could be had by whichever team plays the best today.
