No. 1 Dragons survive Batesville regional scare
RICH FOWLER PHOTO
Batesville’s No. 12 Brayden Maple drives to the bucket in the second half of action. Maple finished his final game as a Bulldog with eight points.
On paper this Class 3A Regional Championship at Charlestown was not supposed to be close. Considered by many to be the best boys high school basketball team in the state regardless of class, No. 1 ranked Silver Creek was favored by 27 points. It was the same margin that the Dragons were beating teams by on average all season long.
Did Silver Creek win? Yes. The deeper, taller and more talented team which featured three NCAA Division I recruits won out in the end by a 92-77 final score. But by no means would anyone say No. 13 Batesville was a loser in this one and a gutsy Bulldog effort will forever be a memorable one.
Silver Creek (28-1) advances to the Class 3A South Semi-State this weekend and the four-team field will also feature No. 2 Princeton (23-3), No. 3 Indianapolis Cathedral (22-5) and No. 16 Indianapolis Roncalli (18-7).
For a good 26 minutes on Saturday at Charlestown Sports Arena, there was no guarantee that the Dragons would be moving on because Batesville looked primed to pull off one the biggest upsets in state tournament history. Kamryn Holcomb’s three-pointer opened the game and from there the Bulldogs put plenty of doubters on notice until quite frankly the blue and white simply ran out of gas as the fourth quarter chugged along.
Not only did Batesville match Silver Creek early shot for shot, but head coach Aaron Garrett and company also found themselves with a 23-20 lead after the first quarter and nearly led at halftime had not it not been for a late Silver Creek surge that allowed the state’s top-ranked team a slim 43-39 edge. The Dragons inched that margin out to eight points heading into the fourth period and that was when the Bulldogs started to see fatigue settle in.
Batesville made a couple comeback attempts but coming to a halt was a stat line that read seven lead changes and four ties between the two teams. Silver Creek took advantage of the exhaustion and spent the last couple of minutes pushing the game out to the final 15-point margin, a margin that quite frankly seemed a heck of a lot closer given the performance that the Bulldogs gave.
Now with that being said, Silver Creek even when challenged was pretty impressive. The Dragons shot 68 percent from the floor and posted a 75 percent shooting clip from two-point range. All five starters scored in double figures.
Junior Brandon Hunter, who holds offers from Western Kentucky and Miami (Ohio) and is now being recruited by several Big Ten schools, had 19 points on 9-of-12 with seven assists and Richmond commit Dane Caldwell posted 17 points and six rebounds, the majority coming late in the game. Kasen Daeger, a Stony Brook commit, dropped four 3-pointers in the first half and finished with 16 points, Dane Sprigler added 14 points and Brody McLaughlin went inside for 11 points. The Dragons also scored 15 points off the bench.
Now, back to Batesville. The Bulldogs shot 55 percent from the field and totaled a 14-of-28 mark from the three-point line for 50 percent, a number that had to be spot on in order to stick with the Dragons. Of the 77 points scored, three came from players in double figures. Senior Trenten Luers lit up the scoreboard in the first half and quietly pieced together a solid second half en route to 26 points on 10-of-16 shooting in what was considered to be a career-best performance. Not to be outdone was junior James Hughes who canned five 3-pointers and equaled the Luers’ amount of 26 points on 10-of-19 shooting.
Kamryn Holcomb shot 50 percent from the floor and finished the night with 15 points, 12 of which were from three-point range. Other notable numbers included Hughes with six rebounds and senior Ethan Schneider grabbing two steals. Luers wrapped up with a team-high four assists.
Batesville finishes the year with an outstanding 20-5 overall record which included conference, county and sectional championships. The Bulldogs lose three starters in Luers, Schneider and Brayden Maple along with Lincoln Garrett off the bench but the program is expected to return the rest of its roster which includes a very successful junior varsity squad.
CLASS 3A REGIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
at Charlestown
NO. 1 SILVER CREEK 92, NO. 13 BATESVILLE 77
SC – 20. 23. 29. 20. – 92
BV – 23. 16. 25. 13. – 77
SILVER CREEK (28-1) – Brandon Hunter 19, Dane Caldwell 17, Kasen Daeger 16, Dane Sprigler 14, Brody McLaughlin 11, Lucas Linderman 7, Donovan Whitehead 4, Jerron Miles 2, Brody Oliver 2, Michael Jude 0, Aiden Makun 0, Evan Renn 0.
BATESVILLE (20-5) – Trenten Luers 26, James Hughes 26, Kamryn Holcomb 15, Brayden Maple 8, Braydin Hughes 2, Ethan Schneider 0, Lincoln Garrett 0, Winston Garrett 0, Levi Hunt 0, Camden Kaiser 0, Hank Bohman 0, Jackson Peetz 0.
3-Point Goals – SC 9 (Daeger 4, Sprigler 4, Hunter 1), BV 14 (Hughes 5, Luers 4, Holcomb 4, Maple 1). Total Fouls – SC 14, BV 15. Free Throws – SC 11-13, BV 5-8. Fouled Out – BV: Maple.
