Will Spellman, center, and Michael Ephraim defend the basket for Center Grove during Tuesday’s game against Mooresville.
Chris Williams | For the Daily Journal
BLOOMINGTON
A team with as many weapons as Center Grove has can only be held down for so long.
Locked in a tense battle with Mooresville for the first 16 minutes of play, the Class 4A No. 10 Trojans used a dominating third-quarter surge to pull away for what became a 60-37 victory in the opening round of the Bloomington North Sectional on Tuesday evening.
Center Grove (18-4) will meet the host Cougars in a semifinal game on Friday. In the first game of the night, Greenwood saw its season come to a close with a 59-32 loss to Bloomington South.
Senior Joey Schmitz, scoreless in the first half, opened the third quarter with a putback basket and then knocked down a 3-pointer to stretch a five-point halftime edge to 10. Peyton Byrd followed with a breakaway dunk and a baseline drive to make it 33-19 with 5:04 left in the period. Three straight buckets moments later, two by Ben Chestnut bookending a Schmitz layup, capped an extended 21-2 surge that left the Trojans comfortably ahead, 43-21, at the 2:09 mark.
Trojans coach Zach Hahn credited his team’s defense with setting the tone for the decisive run.
“I think we got six consecutive stops to start the third quarter, which was good,” Hahn said. “A couple of them led to some transition baskets for us. I didn’t really think we played all that well offensively, and some of it’s probably a credit to Mooresville, but our defense is kind of what carried us.”
The Pioneers (10-14) ended the third with consecutive 3-pointers to get back within 16, but a Byrd 3 and a Dylan Meador rebound bucket gave Center Grove a 54-33 lead midway through the fourth. Hahn emptied his bench shortly thereafter.
Chestnut scored 11 points to pace a balanced Trojan offense that also got nine points each from Meador and Schmitz and eight apiece from Byrd and Jalen Bundy.
The relatively low first-half score belied the frenetic pace set by the Trojans and Pioneers, as both teams came out playing intense, aggressive defense. In the opening minutes, that took the form of four Center Grove blocked shots, three of those by 6-foot-10 junior Michael Ephraim.
Fouls started to pile up on Mooresville as the first half wore on, and as the Pioneers went deeper into their bench than planned, Bundy took advantage. The senior point guard had six points and a pair of assists in the second quarter, helping Center Grove creep out to a 24-19 advantage by the midway point.
In the opener, Greenwood (8-15) got on the board first with an and-one from senior Jake Mosemann, but the baskets were too few and far between the rest of the night. A Sam Thompson layup early in the second quarter got the Woodmen within a pair at 10-8, but the Panthers (15-10) answered with eight straight points, including back-to-back 3-pointers from James Clark and Andrew Elsesser, to go up by double digits. Greenwood trailed at halftime, 24-14.
Mosemann tried to spark his team in the third quarter, scoring five points in the first minute to cut the deficit to seven. The Woodmen couldn’t keep that momentum going, though, and Bloomington South outscored them 17-0 over the next 10 minutes to build a 40-19 cushion with 5:04 remaining. The margin grew to 30 points late in the fourth.
“It just seemed like our energy was down from the start,” Mosemann said. “We didn’t come out with much effort. Obviously, you can’t do anything about it now, but I definitely would have loved to change that.”
The Woodmen bid adieu to three seniors that saw action Tuesday, including Mosemann, who scored a team-high 14 in his career finale. That group leaves behind a team that entered the year without much experience and came out more battle-tested — and more confident after a three-game win streak in February.
Mosemann believes better days are ahead for the returning players.
“A bunch of talented kids; they were just young and inexperienced,” he said. “Moving on the next couple of years, you should have a fun group to watch.”
For Center Grove, Friday brings a chance to avenge last season’s sectional home loss to Bloomington North — but Hahn says his team has generally brought the same intensity regardless of opponent or situation.
“This group’s done a really good job of just treating every game the same, and that’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “You can never get too high, you can never get too low, and they’ve kind of maintained that even-keel thought process all year. We just have to be a next-possession team.”
On to the next one.
