Cougars key on Indians’ inexperience

ACKLEY – A third straight game for Clarksville’s leading scorer, Ethan Schmidt, on the bench with an ankle injury made this non-conference game at AGWSR High School no contest.

The Cougars ran out to a big early lead against the Indians and never looked back, posting a 78-30 win over coach Jordan Myers’ squad.

“Hopefully he’s back Thursday, don’t know for sure,” Myers said of when Schmidt will be back. “Hopefully, sometime soon.”

Although Schmidt was seen in a walking boot, Myers said it was just precautionary.

And, with another Clarksville senior Deric Trees drawing a technical foul for a shove after a wrestling match for the ball that resulted in a jump ball, he never saw the court again and AGWSR jumped on the rest of the Indians’ relatively inexperienced group.

“We just thought it best to get him out of the game at that point,” Myers said. “He’s already with a banged-up toe. He lost his cool there and we don’t accept that. He’s frustrated, but we’ve got three (more) games to play this week.”

The Cougars forced 17 first-half turnovers that directly led to points. AGWSR’s Luke Starr, who finished with 31 points – more than Clarksville as a team – had 17 points at halftime.

“We haven’t pressed a lot this year,” AGWSR coach Riley Schipper said, “and we really don’t, we haven’t gone over it (the press) a ton, but I thought the guys responded well to the challenge and to see what we could do with it and creating turnovers, if it was something we could do, then we could get easy buckets. I thought we did a good job creating turnovers.

“That led to lay-ups and that always makes it an easier job for me and makes it an easier job for the guys when we get the easy shots. When we share the basketball and get easy looks, we’re capable of scoring in bunches and tonight we did it.”

Myers said he was displeased with how his team handled the pressure.

“We didn’t take care of the basketball enough,” Myers said. “We listen to the stands more than to ourselves and we dribble into traps because of that. We’ve got to take care of the ball. Defensively, we didn’t compete nearly hard enough tonight and our energy level is the lowest I’ve seen it.”

And, even if AGWSR missed shots, it was getting offensive boards for put-backs, something that hasn’t happened a lot for the 4-9 Cougars.

“I think sometimes we get called for fouls (on offensive boards),” Schipper said. “That’s limited us on going after them, but I challenged the guys tonight that it’s got to be the effort plays and the effort plays are what benefited us tonight and really gave us a jump on what we were doing.”

Besides scoring, Schipper said that Starr did a nice job of leading his team against the Indians.

“Luke has done a nice job,” Schipper said. “His shot selection was really good tonight, obviously a lot of lay-ups, but if he can get the ball swung to him, he can get his feet set and get into a rhythm, he’s hard to stop and I thought tonight, even when he wasn’t scoring, he did a good job of distributing it to guys who needed to get to the ball, Ben Macy and those guys with their feet set.

“Luke is not afraid to throw it to them and he’s not afraid to shoot it, so I think he’s really developed into a leadership role and I hope it continues to this last half.”

Schipper also credited his team’s hustle.

“We dived on the floor for loose balls and if we continue to do that we’ll be in and win a lot of close ball games,” he said.

AGWSR 78, Clarksville 30

Clarksville (2-10, 0-5) –Deric Trees 0 0-0 0, 3 0-0 8, Kaden Becker 3 0-0 8, Alek Kellogg 1 0-0 3, Kelton Kluiter 1 0-0 3, Levi Kampman 0 0-0 0, Cade Ison 0 0-0 0, Gavin Kelm 0 0-0 0, Jacob Stauffer 3 0-0 6, Cooper Negen 0 0-0 0, Corbin Engel 4 0-0 8, Conner Freerks 1 0-0 2. Totals 13 0-0 30.

AGWSR (4-9, 3-4)– Daniel Stahl 3 0-0 7, Jaden Penning 8 2-2 19, David Koop 3 0-0 6, Ben Macy 9 0-0 9, Keaton Penning 1 0-0 2, Luke Starr 13 3-5 31, Darren Veld 0 0-0 0, Titan Opperman 2 0-1 4. Totals 39 5-8 78.

Clarksville   8 14   4  4 – 72

AGWSR     16 29  25 8 – 30

Three-point goals– Clark 4 (Becker 2, Kellogg, Kluiter); AGWSR 7 (Macy 3, Starr 2, Stahl, J. Penning). Rebounds– Clark, NA; AGWSR, NA. Assists– Clark, NA: AGWSR, NA. Steals– Clark, NA: AGWSR, NA. Blocks – Clark, NA: AGWSR, NA. Total fouls– Clark, NA; AGWSR, NA. Fouled out – None.