By Bubba Harnist
Staff Writer
GREENCASTLE – The Cloverdale Clovers are champions of the 2007 Putnam County Tournament.
The win may not be the headline; the dominating fashion in which they won is the headline for the Clovers. Putting three people in double figures and allowing only three South Putnam players to score, Cloverdale knocked off South Put 57-34 to claim the championship in convincing fashion.
“I thought we played well,” said Clovers coach Bruce Cook in the understatement of the early season.
“I can’t say enough about the seven girls that played,” Cook said. “They wanted to win and they played hard. Its nice to win this.”
The two teams were close after the first quarter with the Clovers holding on to a three-point advantage, 12-9.
Getting big baskets from Kristin McCammon, Cloverdale went on a 7-0 run at the start of the second quarter to increase the lead ten points, 19-9. South Putnam fought back though behind Bailey Birt and closed the gap to six, 26-20 at the half.
“We only had two turnovers the first half,” Cook said. “That was big for us.”
Four minutes into the second half, Cloverdale got baskets from Ashley Koosman to push the lead back to ten, 35-25. From there, Cloverdale slowly started to pull away, increasing the lead to 13, 43-30 at the end of three quarters.
A 5-0 run to start the fourth ended what little hope South Put had as the 5-0 run made it 48-30. From that point, Cloverdale would go on to score nine more points, while South Put only managed four. The final margin was 23 points as Cloverdale brought home the hardware with the 57-34 win.
With the loss, South Putnam falls to 2-2. The Eagles will be back in action on Tuesday when they travel to West Vigo to take on the Vikings. The three South Put players in the scorebook were Oceaia Boetjer with 13 points, Leeah Butts with 11, and Brit with 10.
With the win, Cloverdale improves to 3-2 on the season. The Clovers will be back in action on November 27 when they host Riverton Parke.
“We’re kind of on a roll now,” Cook said. “We need to keep it up.”
“We are a work in progress, we don’t want this to be it because this is kind of a start for us, but we feel like there is a lot of room for improvement.”
Leading the way for Cloverdale was Ashley Koosman with 17 points, while Elizabeth Cheatham and McCammon each chipped in 15 points.
Cook was especially pleased with the play of McCammon.
“I thought she (McCammon) played real well again tonight,” he said. “Defensively she stepped things up for us so much and hit some big three’s, which gives us a big boost.”
“We are pretty balanced offensively right now,” Cook added. “I think we are hard to guard when we get scoring from McCammon on the outside, Koosman slashing, and Cheatham scoring on the inside for us.”
“Right now, that’s a pretty hard combination to beat and defend.”
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