Losing to an archrival during the regular season isn’t easy, but the Ben Davis basketball program is benefiting in the long run.
Since suffering a 10-point loss at Carmel on Jan. 25, the Giants are 9-1 and playing in a Class 4A semistate for the second time in three seasons.
Coach Don Carlisle, a starting forward for Ben Davis in the late 1990s, credits a loss to the Greyhounds midway through the 1995-96 season as that squad’s wakeup call. That squad regrouped to claim a single-class state championship inside the RCA Dome.
It’s a phenomenon Carlisle can’t explain. At the same time, he’s not upset about it.
“I don’t know what it is about playing against Carmel,” said Carlisle, who is in his first season at his alma mater after three seasons as head coach at Arlington. “This year we lost to them, but I thought we played better than we had been playing.”
A week earlier, Ben Davis lost at home to Center Grove, the team it faces Saturday at the Hatchet House in Washington for the right to play in next week’s Class 4A state championship game.
The Trojans’ interior players, 6-foot-9 senior post Trayce Jackson-Davis and 6-7 junior forward Justin DeGraaf, dominated that game, both finishing with double-doubles. Jackson-Davis had 23 points and 17 rebounds, while DeGraaf went for 16 and 11.
“We weren’t tough. Trayce and DeGraaf, I don’t know a better way to put it than they punked us underneath,” Carlisle said. “They got a lot of offensive rebounds, and I felt like we got out-physicaled that game.”
Ben Davis center Dawand Jones played limited minutes the first meeting — he didn’t enter the game until the third quarter and scored two points — as he and some of his teammates were continuing to adjust to Carlisle’s expectations.
The 6-9, 365-pound senior, committed to play offensive tackle for Ohio State’s football team, will be in the starting lineup tonight. Jones and 6-5 senior swingman Jalen Windham are a formidable one-two punch for the Giants, averaging 18 and 17.5 points, respectively.
“I think I put Dawand in at the end of the third quarter in the first Center Grove game,” Carlisle said. “I didn’t feel guys were giving me the best effort, so I had to do what I had to do. I was asking them to do things they weren’t used to doing, and it was them adjusting to the demands.”
The issue, Carlisle said, was getting players to properly execute his up-tempo offensive style. This was a departure from Mark James, the Giants’ previous coach, who implemented a half-court system.
Jones’ massive presence is expected to make it more difficult for Jackson-Davis and DeGraaf to dominate the glass the way they did two months ago. Either way, Center Grove most certainly has the Giants’ attention.
“I like being in a position where we have to focus,” Carlisle said. “Playing against Trayce and Center Grove, our guys will be locked in. We played them before, they’re in the MIC and we lost to them on our home floor.”
