BOYS' BASKETBALL: Generals close regular season with 84-34 wi

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February 19, 2013

BOYS' BASKETBALL: Generals close regular season with 84-34 wi

Henryville winless heading into Friday’s regular-season finale

By JON REITER greg.mengelt@newstribune.com The News and Tribune Tue Feb 19, 2013, 11:55 PM EST

HENRYVILLE — It was expected that the Class 2A No. 10 Clarksville Generals would likely dominate against winless Henryville at H.G. Furnish Gymnasium on Tuesday night, and that they did, finishing out their regular season with an 84-34 win over the Hornets.

The Clarksville (15-5) scoring barrage began almost immediately. The Generals embarked on a 9-0 run over 90 seconds towards the end of the first quarter, capturing an 18-4 lead after an Aidan McEwen basket with 25.7 seconds left.

Clarksville, which dropped a close game in overtime to Class A No. 10 Borden on Friday, led 40-17 at the half, 62-25 at the end of the third quarter and went with reserves mostly throughout the fourth quarter.

“I think we did a lot of things well tonight,” Clarksville coach Jason Connell said. “Going into sectionals next week, I think we wanted to look at a few things. We moved the ball well, and I think overall we responded well. We played pretty well against Borden, we just came up a little short. I think we came out tonight and were ready to play.”

Senior Austin Johnson led Clarksville with 21 points, and he was one of four double-digit scorers for the Genreals. Forward Aidan McEwen added 15, and the starting backcourt of Calvin McEwen and Andrew Jones added 13 and 10, respectively.

Clarksville will have a week off before they face archrival Class 2A No. 4 Providence in the first round of the Crawford County sectional on Tuesday night.

“We’ve got to finetune a lot of things,” Connell said. “We played them twice and came up short both times [38-36 in the Silver Creek Holiday Tournament on Dec. 29 and 60-51 in a Jan. 4 regular-season matchup], so it’s going to take some really working on things over the next week to get us ready to go.”

The Hornets, who were led by Tyler Collins’ 20 points, still have some work left in the regular season.

The Hornets travel to Crawford County Thursday night in a sectional preview in Marengo. Henryville will also face Wolfpack in the first round of the sectional Tuesday night. The Hornets also face Indianapolis Herron at home Saturday.

Watching the experienced Generals was hopefully an education for coach Dan Carmony’s youthful squad, which has several underclassmen that see extensive playing time. The Hornets turned the ball over 19 times, and Carmony said those sorts of things would improve with more court time and more experience.

“They were just bigger and stronger than us, but I just thought they guarded us really well and that made it difficult for us to get into our offense,” Carmony said. “Too many turnovers in the half-court. Sometimes you turn it over against the press, but when you turn it over in the halfcourt, that really makes it tough especially when you’re already behind.”