Temperatures were right around freezing in Johnson County on Friday night, but that didn’t stop it from raining inside of Glenn Ray Gymnasium.
Center Grove’s boys soaked host Whiteland with a barrage of 3-point shots in the first half, making 10 of its first 14 shots from long range to storm out to a big early lead before cruising to an 81-52 victory.
With the win, Center Grove (6-0) is off to the best start in its history.
“We wanted to come out and punish them from the start,” Trojan junior Joey Schmitz said, “because if they stuck with us to begin they would’ve stuck with us the whole game. So punishing them from the start was really the main key there.”
The Trojans indeed came out firing, with four different players combining to knock down five 3-pointers in the first six minutes of play. The last of those makes, a transition 3 from the wing by Schmitz, gave the visitors a 19-7 advantage. Another Schmitz trey and a last-second reverse layup by Will Spellman, extended the Center Grove lead to 26-11 as the first quarter ended.
Life got no easier for Whiteland in the second. Peyton Byrd came off the Trojans’ bench and delivered 10 points in less than four minutes, with his second 3-pointer during that stretch — Center Grove’s 10th of the night — made it 44-17 with 4:17 still remaining in the half. The Trojans then tacked on the last six points of the period to take a sizable 52-20 cushion into the intermission.
Schmitz, who made four first-half 3s and finished with 16 points, credited crisp ball movement for setting up his team’s overwhelming shooting performance.
“Our locker room is all together,” he said. “We have a saying, ‘share the sugar,’ and that’s what we go by.”
The second half proved a bit more merciful after a Marcus Ankney 3-pointer with 5:37 to go in the third quarter made it 61-24 and triggered a running clock. Center Grove’s lead grew as large as 40 points on a Spellman 3 just over a minute later, but the Warriors were able to make the score a bit more respectable over the final 12-plus minutes.
Whiteland coach Nate Cangany wasn’t as much down on his own team’s effort as the score might imply. The Warriors, he said, just ran into a hot team.
“A high percentage of those 10 made 3s (in the first half) were contested,” he said. “We had hands up and we were right there rotating at guys; it wasn’t just a bunch of wide-open shots.
“We were going back and forth a little bit, and then the game changes on their made 3s. … They got hot tonight, and when a team is that hot, it really tests the mental part of the game for you.”
Ankney paced a balanced Trojans attack with 17 points, joined in double figures by Schmitz (16), Spellman (14) and Byrd (12). Owen Baker chipped in eight points and Garrett Messer six for Center Grove.
“I really believe we have eight guys that can score 10-plus points, and you saw that a little bit tonight,” Trojans coach Zach Hahn said.
Wiatt McLaughlin scored 16 points in a losing effort for Whiteland (2-4). Austin Willoughby and Gavin Stubbe added nine apiece and Jazz Banwait contributed seven.
Despite the lopsided nature of the win, Hahn wasn’t completely satisfied.
“I told them we have to be a 32-minute team, and tonight I thought we played really hard for 16,” he said. “The second half we let them get downhill and get in the paint and do what they wanted to do offensively, and that’s something that we have to continue to get better at.”
