Albany Speer
Columbus East’s offense fed its defense, and vice versa, Thursday night, and the result was a feeding frenzy.
The Olympians scored the first 15 points of the first quarter and the first 17 points of the second quarter in building a big lead early on their way to a 66-25 girls basketball win against Bloomington South.
“Our defense from the get-go, we pressured so hard, and that’s what really led to us be able to get everyone involved,” senior point guard Koryn Greiwe said. “So it really started on defense, and then offense was just easy because we were getting steals and getting fast-breaks and just overall sharing the ball.”
East (2-0) forced 23 Panther turnovers, 13 of which game in the first quarter which ended with a 24-9 Olympians advantage.
“Obviously, we got off to a good start with our press,” East coach Danny Brown said. “We’ve been working on the press since summertime. We spent a lot of time practicing instead of going to camps and playing games. We decided to do that, and it’s paying off so far . We forced 32 turnovers (Saturday) against Floyd Central and (23) tonight. But that press is getting us going early in the game. We didn’t hit the first game against Floyd Central, but tonight, we shot better, and I knew we would.”
The Olympians shot 54 percent (26 of 48) from the field. Albany Speer hit her first six shots, including four 3-pointers, and finished 6 for 7 from the field in putting up a game-high 16 points.
“I’ve been working on (my shot) in practice,” Speer said. “But I couldn’t have made those shots without my teammates looking for me and making some good assists to me. It’s a group effort. We had a great full-court press that caused a lot of turnovers and we really just finished.”
Speer’s back-to-back 3-pointers early in the third quarter gave East a 35-point lead, prompting a running clock for the first Olympians’ game since the new mercy rule was implemented in the offseason.
“It was a good start, and we got everybody involved,” Brown said. “I sure didn’t think we’d be seeing the mercy rule in any game on our schedule, so that’s surprising.”
Saige Stahl scored 12 points, and Greiwe finished with 10 for East. Harley Gant added eight points on 4 of 4 shooting.
Ten of the 12 Olympians to see action got into the scoring column. Messiah Trapp grabbed six rebounds to lead East to a 29-27 advantage on the boards.
“We talked about how important that was to get everybody some rest for not just Saturday, but we play again Tuesday and Thursday,” Brown said. “We basically have five games in seven days, so we talked about that before the game, how we were going to sub, and it worked out that we got to sub a lot.”
East will host a pair of top-10 teams on Saturday. Class 4A No. 10 Fishers will visit for an 11:30 a.m. varsity tip, and 4A No. 8 Hamilton Southeastern will visit for a 5:30 p.m. varsity tip.
“I’m really looking forward to the games this weekend,” Greiwe said. “We needed a big win, and that was a big win.”
