PHOTO by David Lee Hartlage
STORY by Cary Stemle
SEYMOUR, INDIANA — Like the street brawler who lands the first blow, the New Albany Bulldogs jumped on the Floyd Central Highlanders in Saturday night’s feverish Seymour Sectional final and never relinquished control.
The hard-fought 51-46 win ran the No. 3 Dogs’ record to 23-1, avenged their only defeat, and sent No. 4 Floyd home with only two losses on the season. New Albany advances to Saturday’s Seymour Regional to face No. 5 Bloomington South, which captured the Columbus East Sectional with a 55-52 win over the host team.
Four Bulldogs scored in Saturday’s first quarter, led by Sean Easts’s five points, and New Albany led 14-11. The deficit grew to 26-16 on two Romeo Langford free throws with under a minute left in the half before Floyd’s Matt Weimer hit a three-pointer to close. Langford and Derrick Stevenson scored five apiece to lead New Albany in the second quarter.
Floyd clawed back in the third behind seven straight points from Brendon Hobson and a Weimer bucket, and pulled into a tie at 30 on Evan Nichols’ basket at 2:38. East buried a deep three after a New Albany time-out, which Hobson answered with a hard drive to the bucket.
That set the stage for Langford, who used a Trey Hourigan pick to shake off multiple defenders and slice down the left side of the lane, going airborne and kissing the ball off the glass for a 35-32 lead at the end of three. East found Hourigan for a basket to start the fourth, and after a time-out at the 6:40 mark, New Albany went to a spread offense. Coach Jim Shannon made a similar move in last year’s sectional final against Floyd, breaking open a close game in the fourth quarter.
“We weren’t really stalling, we were pulling the big kids way from the bucket to break them down and go score,” Shannon said. “It’s a scary thing to do because it might not work.”
It did, however, as East found room in the lane for a pull-up jumper, which Floyd’s Luke Gohman answered with a right-corner three. On the next possession, Julien Hunter banked in a lob from East before Gohman’s basket cut the lead to 41-37.
New Albany stretched the margin to 49-40 on two East free throws, but Weimer drew a foul on Darin Starks while shooting from behind the arc and drained three free throws to make it 49-45 with 21 seconds left. East hit 2 of 4 free throws for the final margin.
Fans began lining up at 1 p.m. (doors opened at 6:30 for general admission seating), and Seymour’s Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium was standing room only with about three-fourths of the 8,000-plus fans seeming to be in the New Albany camp. The din occasionally bordered on astonishing, the atmosphere rivaling a late-round NCAA tournament game.
“I knew it would be a dogfight,” Shannon said. “They’re really good — I mean, they’re great. They’re well-coached. They play great defense. They’re big. They’re smart. They run really good stuff, and they isolate people really well.
“We had some tough mismatches on guarding people. When you give up that much size at different spots, they can just bang you into the rim. And if you go double, they kick it out to Weimer, and he ain’t gonna miss. … I know anybody can get anybody on a given night, but I honestly feel like we beat the second-best team in the state. I think if they’d beaten us, they would have made a run to state.”
Shannon and assistant coach B.J. McAllister stayed up till 3 a.m. on Saturday looking at film and debating how best to defend against Floyd. They ultimately matched Langford against Cobie Barnes and put Stevenson on Gohman. Early on, Langford twice rejected Barnes’ shot and hounded him into a turnover, and the 6-foot-6 junior scored only two points. Gohman had 6.
“We decided that we were gonna put Romeo on Barnes,” Shannon said. “Even as good as Gohman is, I felt like if Barnes got going, we might be in trouble, and Ro knows how to get into him. … We felt like Barnes is a little bigger, a little stronger around the rim, so I wanted a bigger guy on him. I also felt like Gohman would hurt us more from 3, and I wanted a quicker guy on him.
“I challenged Romeo. I didn’t have to say much — I said, ‘Let’s not let Barnes make us look foolish.’ I wasn’t even looking at him when I said it. … You can motivate him without even taking to him. Just make sure he overhears it. His defense was special tonight. Derrick did a great job on Gohman, too. Trey stepped up big-time; he was finishing against their trees. Julien was great. Chris Johnson, too. And although Darin only played the last two minutes of the game, those are big minutes.”
Langford played through the typical bump-and-grind that opposing defenses throw his way. With blood seeping through his white compression stockings, his will and his skill were diference -makers, as illustrated by a handful of key plays: the bank shot at the end of the third; retrieving his own miss in heavy traffic to earn two free throws with about 3 minutes left in the game; and his lengthy two-handed overhead pass to Hourigan — which Barnes nearly deflected — for a bucket and 47-42 lead with 1:20 left.
Langford finished with 17 points and East added 14. Stevenson scored eight, while Hourigan and Hunter added six each. Weimer led Floyd with 17, and Hobson scored 12.
East, an 88 percent free-throw shooter on the season, was only 4 for 8 in the fourth quarter.
“Like every other kid in the country, he doesn’t always get to shoot them with one or two minutes on the clock in the championship game,” Shannon said with a smile. “Those are a lot harder to make. But Sean had a great floor game.”
At the final horn, the New Albany student section flooded the floor, while the players’ reactions were muted. Winning a sectional is only a first-step goal, but coming through against a talented arch-rival is a substantial accomplishment.
“I feel relieved,” Shannon said. “We feel blessed and fortunate to get out with the win.”
As for Bloomington South (24-2), which the visiting Dogs defeated 70-58 on Nov. 25 in the second game of the season, Shannon expects another dogfight.
“They’re similar to Floyd Central but not as big,” he said. “They have good shooters — a lot of good shooters. It’ll be a lot like this game.”
Center Grove (19-6) takes on Evansville North (13-12) in the second game on Saturday, with the winners facing off that evening.
