Coaches talk about bouncing back when things go wrong. Lose a close game, come back tougher the next night.
Easier said than done — but when it happens, it will warm a coach’s heart. After his team outlasted Zionsville 50-42 at the Doghouse on Saturday night, New Albany coach Jim Shannon couldn’t find much to complain about.
“I was up on the Second Street Bridge (Friday) night after the Floyd game,” he quipped after congratulating his team on the win, referencing Friday’s 52-48 setback at No. 6 Floyd Central. “We bounced back after a tough loss against a rival.
“The kids were a little bit down this morning. We clipped up some film from (Floyd). We didn’t really want to do that but felt like it was necessary — not to be negative but just to say, here are the things we’re not doing correctly. We’ve gotta fix ’em. So we went through that this morning, sent ’em home, and then we brought ’em back early and went through Zionsville and what they were gonna do.”
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Zionsville is a different animal. Member of the Hoosier Crossroads Conference and ranked No. 17 in the latest coach’s poll, with early wins over No. 11 Culver Academies and No. 16 Carmel , plus a double overtime loss to No. 19 Westfield. Seven-man rotation with a 6-11 kid in the middle and other rangy ballers who relentlessly stick to coach Shaun Busick’s motion offense.
“They run it really well,” Shannon said. “They just run it over and over and over until you make a mistake, and then they make you pay for it. “
Zionsville relied on a 2-3 zone in the half-court and occasionally confused the Bulldogs with half-court and full-court pressure.
“We saw a lot of zone tonight, a little trapping, got pressed,” Shannon said. “We haven’t really had that yet, so it was good. We’re so young that we’ll see things that we’re gonna have to be patient about, because our kids are gonna be like, ‘Well that’s different.’”
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Zionsville scored the first six points and led 12-10 after one quarter. Sophomore guard Tucker Biven (two threes) and senior forward Trey Hourigan scored all of New Albany’s points. Hourigan’s rebound basket capped a 6-0 New Albany run for an 18-16 lead late in the second quarter.
The Eagles led 29-27 after three. Biven’s sophomore running mate, Kaden Stanton, got untracked after an uneven first half. His three three-pointers accounted for all of the team’s points in the quarter.
The fourth quarter arrived with a question: Who’d rise to the occasion and lead his team to the victory.
Turns out it was Hourigan. After three Biven free throws gave New Albany a 30-29 lead, Hourigan buried a three. Ben Weidner answered for Zionsville with six straight points before Stanton hit a three and Hourigan connected again from distance for a 39-35 New Albany lead. Anthony Scales had two free throws for Zionsville before Hourigan answered with his third trey of the quarter.
The Dogs held on from there for the win. Hourigan led the way with 17 points, Biven had 13, and Stanton scored 12.
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The Bulldogs don’t actually give out a game ball after victories, but if they did, Shannon would’ve had trouble narrowing it down on Saturday.
“So I just started naming a bunch of guys,” he said. “I really felt like everyone played great. Trey was spectacular stepping out and shooting the three. That really is probably what lifted us up and over the top. Tucker was his usual Tucker, he played great. Stanton played big. After I took him out early — he was a little shaky. I took him out and let him sit for a while. I felt like he went back in and played great, especially in the second half. We need him to run the show, and I thought he did a better job of that.
“(Sophomore Maddox) Schmelz played great defensively, and he handled the ball for us. He did a nice job. I felt like Jordan Thomas did a good job rebounding. He didn’t score much, but he had seven rebounds. That’s critical against a team like that because they have such good size. Not just the big kid, but their other guys are 6-4, 6-5, 6-3. They didn’t have any little guys. So I thought he did a good job.
“I thought Charlie Carr gave us some good minutes, made a couple nice passes, played some good defense. We don’t need a lot of guys from the bench, but we need some minutes from the bench. (Jackson) Streander is just a freshman. He’s gonna continue to get better. He played a lot of minutes against a ranked team tonight, and I thought, held his own. … I thought he played hard. He rebounded, blocked out.
”So I thought everybody contributed tonight.”
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New Albany plays host to Seymour on Friday and travels to Carmel — the defending 4A state champions — on Saturday.
