Had the first quarter not happened, Whiteland might well have wrestled the Johnson County girls basketball title away from longtime nemesis Center Grove.
Unfortunately for the Warriors, that opening period was all too real — and it turned out to be the difference in the game.
Senior guards Emma Utterback and Ella Thompson combined for 42 points as Center Grove started hot and then held off a furious Whiteland comeback bid for a 55-46 victory at Greenwood on Saturday night.
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Down by double digits for most of the evening, Whiteland made a big charge at the start of the fourth, with Megan Harlow’s three-point play keying a 12-0 surge that cut the deficit to 43-38 with 5:48 left in the game. But the Trojans regained their footing with baskets from Mary Wilson and Utterback and then iced it from the foul line, where they were 11 of 12 on the night.
“Sometimes when adversity hits, you either fall apart or you come together,” said Utterback, who had a game-high 22 points. “I think we were kind of falling apart a little bit, and then when we had one final huddle we were like, ‘Come on, guys — let’s bring this back together, let’s stay patient,’ and we were patient the rest of the game and we pulled it out at the end.”
As they had in their semifinal rout of Edinburgh, the Trojans (4-2) got off to a torrid start against the Warriors. Utterback opened the scoring with a driving layup, and Thompson and Ashley Eck followed with 3-pointers to make it 8-0 less than two minutes in.
Whiteland interrupted the run with a free throw, but Utterback responded with three consecutive baskets and Mary Wilson added a 3 to stretch the lead to 17-1 with 1:30 to go in the first period.
“We had that same intensity that we started with, actually, the whole tournament,” Thompson said. “I think the biggest thing for us offensively was just the ball reversals. We were moving the ball really well, making the extra pass — we were just getting really good, high-quality looks.”
The Warriors settled down, getting a pair of buckets from Toni Joyner and getting within 12 on a couple of occasions midway through the game. But Thompson caught fire, scoring 15 of her 20 points after halftime to help ward off the Whiteland rally.
Despite the defeat, Whiteland coach Kyle Shipp was pleased with the way his team performed after the rough start.
“We just needed to relax a little bit and play the game,” he said, “and there in the second half, we did. We got some shots to go down, we were able to set our defense, and I think that really helped us.”
For Center Grove, the run through the county tournament helped restore any confidence that might have been lost in setbacks at Brownsburg and Warren Central earlier this month.
“Credit our girls for finding it when we needed it,” Trojans coach Kevin Stuckmeyer said. “I kept telling them, they had to come to us once we were able to get that big lead, and we were just able to withstand it long enough.”
Joyner and Harlow each had 12 points to lead the Warriors, while Natalie Stuck finished with 10 and Klenner had nine. Wilson contributed 10 points for the Trojans.
