Indian Creek’s Ayla Lollar goes up for a shot over a Greenwood Christian defender during Tuesday’s county tournament game.
Rob Baker | For the Daily Journal
The first step in Indian Creek’s Johnson County tournament title defense didn’t require any overexertion.
The top-ranked team in Class 3A dominated from the outset and rolled to a 79-15 victory over Greenwood Christian in opening-round action on Tuesday.
Despite the lopsided score, the Braves (4-0) — who will play Class 4A No. 4 Center Grove in the 6 p.m. semifinal Thursday evening in Franklin — didn’t see it as a wasted outing.
“There’s always things that we need to work on, especially this early in the season,” Indian Creek coach Brian Ferris said. “It doesn’t matter who we’re playing. We just want to be the best that we can be and work on the things that we need to work on, and I think we accomplished that tonight.”
The rout started with an Ayla Lollar 3 to open the game as Indian Creek scored the first seven points. GCA (2-4) slowed the early avalanche and cut it to 11-5 on a 3-pointer from Annaleece Jackson and a layup by Sydney Waldron, but the Braves responded by scoring the final 22 points of the quarter — a blitz that started with a Faith Wiseman layup and ended with a Lauren Foster putback that beat the buzzer — to make it 33-5.
Greenwood Christian committed 17 turnovers in the opening period, two of those during a whiplash-inducing 15-second stretch that saw a Wiseman 3-pointer followed immediately by consecutive steal-layup packages from Lollar and Foster. The Braves collected 11 steals in the quarter, including three apiece from Foster, Bre Gault and Olivia Pendleton.
Indian Creek spent most of the second quarter getting its second unit into the scorebook, with six points from Lexi Sichting leading the way as the Braves extended their advantage to 52-10 by halftime. Those backups also played most of the second half, a valuable opportunity for extended minutes that Ferris hopes will pay off down the road.
“It’s always nice to be able to get them as many minutes as we can, especially early,” he said. “You never know when you’re going to have to have them way early in the game, plus get them seasoned now and then down in the future they’ll be ready to go and be the main kids.”
Foster opened the second half with a corner 3 and Indian Creek extended the lead to 68-12 before Ferris started pulling his starters with two and a half minutes left in the third. The spread was 61 points heading into the final period.
Wiseman was the high scorer for the Braves, totaling 15 in the first quarter and finishing with 21 despite sitting about half of the night. Foster ended the night with 13 points, four assists and five steals in similarly limited minutes, while Lollar scored 12 points and Sichting contributed nine.
Waldron had eight points before fouling out to lead the Cougars.
GCA coach Tiffany Smith-Clements said she knew what her young team was likely in for against the Braves but was proud of how her team faced up to the challenge.
“We fought until the end,” she said. “They didn’t give up and they continued to play hard for the entire game. I think that’s something to build on and will help us with our sectional once we go back down to the 1A realm. … We learned a lot.”
Ferris and the Braves now turn their attention to Center Grove, which won by a similarly large margin on Tuesday in Edinburgh but lost to Indian Creek in last year’s county title game.
“They’re obviously playing real well right now,” Ferris said of the Trojans. “They’re kind of firing on all cylinders; the defense is improved since the last time we saw them last year, so we’re going to expect something that we haven’t seen yet.”
