By Cary Stemle
NORTH VERNON, IND. — New Albany’s rare Thursday night game at HHC rival Jennings County started out innocently enough, with a Sean East basket followed by five points from Derrick Stevenson. By the time it ended, Romeo Langford had created one of those ‘where were you?” moments with a 63-point outburst that bettered his own school record by 15 points.
The scoring exhibition began with a quiet seven in the first quarter — exactly enough to eclipse Rick Mount of Lebanon for 6th place on the all-time Hoosier schoolboy scoring list — before Langford hit for 22 in the 2nd, including New Albany’s last 11.
His 14-point third quarter ended with a tomahawk dunk just before the buzzer, and the performance crossed over into lore during an opening fourth quarter burst that found the smooth senior gliding over the court like a ballerina on ice skates, all the while looking like he was hardly moving at all.
Langford started the period with a three from the right key; another three from the left wing; a driving left-handed finger roll to crack the 50-point mark; three free throws; a fade-away three from the right corner; and another fade-away three from the right wing. After an airball from deep, he followed with an old-fashioned three-point play at the 3:41 mark. Twenty points, four minutes and change.
https://youtu.be/Qpw5ERmfmdM
TOP: A quick slice of Langford’s magical fourth-quarter outburst. ABOVE: Frankie Vision caught the whole shooting match on video.
It’s hard to say whether anything in particular prompted the outburst — his quarter-ending dunk closely followed the Jennings’ student section chant of “he’s a freshman” after a Landin Hacker basket. All of a sudden, it was like Langford was the neighborhood kid with the fastest car, showing eager onlookers a little bit more about what’s really under the hood. It was something to see, even for close-watching Bulldog fans who’ve been shaking their heads at Langford highlights for four years now.
The packed Jennings County gym included a student section where IU red seemed to outnumber Panther blue by about 10-to-1. No one uttered a peep about the air ball (there’s usually one or two who can’t resist regardless of the score) and the “IU” chant broke out in full when Langford left the game with about 3 minutes to play.
“I’ve run out of accolades for him,” New Albany coach Jim Shannon said. “I had no idea Romeo had what he had because at the beginning we weren’t getting him shots. … I looked down at my assistants and asked how many points he had, and they said, ‘Coach, it’s been on the (scoreboard) the whole game.’
“Then he went on a tear — I could just tell he was in a zone where I didn’t want to disrupt that. James Harden had 60 last night, and you know when those kinds of guys are in their zone, you don’t want to take them out. People are here to watch him play. … That’s what they want to see. It was just a special opportunity for him.”
I had Langford shooting 22 for 31 from the field, including 6-of-10 from 3-point range, and 13 of 14 from the foul line, and media reports credited him with 16 rebounds and six assists. The performance ultimately pushed Langford to No. 4 on the scoring list, past Brody Boyd of Dugger.
Hundreds of people lined up to meet Langford afterward, the largest post-game crowd of the season, and it took nearly two hours to clear the queue before the Bulldogs could venture into the brutally cold night for the drive back down I-65.
