.png)
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
BOURBON — The Culver boys basketball team continues to build a culture and a style of play.
Class 1A, No. 5 Triton already has a culture and style of play, and they showed it off again in posting a 59-11 win over the visiting Cavaliers in a Bi-County Tournament quarterfinal at the Trojan Trench Wednesday.
Jayden Overmyer scored a game-high 11 points for Triton (10-1), and Dante Workman and Julian Swanson had eight apiece. Ten different players scored for Triton, who built a 19-2 lead after one quarter and emptied its bench less than two minutes into the second quarter.
Freshmen Braylon Jackson, John Carr and Kolton Howard combined for eight points for Culver, who dropped to 1-11.
Culver also lost to Triton 72-16 in their Hoosier North meeting on Friday.
Culver had seven players in uniform. Three players who played last year but did not graduate decided not to play this year, and another starter quit the team about three weeks ago.
“I thought we had a good week of practice this week leading up to tonight,” Culver coach Drew Mosson said. “When you have four kids quit on their teammates, it’s hard to get better throwing kids into the fire that shouldn’t be in the position that they’re in. You’ve got three freshmen playing a lot of minutes on the varsity. A couple of them weren’t expected for that to happen. So it’s just hard for us to expect progress to this point in the year.”
Triton will play Argos, a 61-51 winner over John Glenn, in the semifinals at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the LaVille main gym. Culver will play John Glenn at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the LaVille auxiliary gym in a consolation game.
Triton coach Jason Groves knows both Mosson and his father Gordon, a Culver assistant, well. Drew Mosson, a 2013 Triton grad, played for Groves. Groves, a 1994 John Glenn grad, played for Gordon Mosson, who spent 25 years as a head coach at John Glenn and another seven as the head coach at Argos. Gordon Mosson is also a former Groves assistant.
“Right now, it’s going to be a process,” Groves said. “They’re young. So they’re probably trying to instill the little things, like defending, rebounding and taking care of the ball. I thought they took care of the ball better than they did the first time we played. It’s just going to be a process and to stick with it. Hopefully, keep building that up.”
Culver committed 24 turnovers against Triton’s swarming pressure defense.
“That might be the best defensive team in our conference for sure, let alone this area,” Mosson said. “I would put Triton against about anybody in any class in our area defensively. But a lot of that was unforced errors on our part. We didn’t execute sets in the offenses we tried to run tonight. You know, it’s kind of a mixture of a point. (Groves) does a good job of getting his kids ready to play some defense, and our kids just weren’t ready to execute our stuff.”
Jonas McCuen hit a right baseline fadeaway jumper in the first quarter. Jackson rainbowed in a 3-pointer in the second quarter. Howard finished with a banker from 10 feet after Caleb McCuen flew out of bounds to save the ball to him. Moments later, Carr hit a 3.
Triton 59, Culver 11
CULVER (11) (1-11)
Braylon Jackson 1 0-0 3, Adam Peterson 0 0-0 0, Jonas McCuen 1 0-0 2, Caleb McCuen 0 1-2 1, Jordan Green 0 0-0 0, John Carr 1 0-0 3, Kolton Howard 1 0-0 2
TEAM: 4 1-2 11
TRITON (59) (10-1)
Dante Workman 4 0-2 8, Julian Swanson 3 0-0 8, Gage Riffle 2 2-2 7, Brady Wood 2 0-0 5, Tanner Witt-Hoyo 3 0-0 6, Landon Patrick 0 0-0 0, Jayden Overmyer 4 2-2 11, Caden Large 1 2-2 4, Wayne Reichert 2 0-0 4, Ben McFarland 0 0-0 0, Isaac Quintana 2 0-0 4, Isaiah Vaca 0 2-2 2
TEAM: 23 8-10 59
Three-point field goals:
Culver 2 (Jackson, Carr),
Triton 5 (Swanson 2, Overmyer, Riffle, Wood)
Total fouls: Culver 9, Triton 6
Turnovers: Culver 24, Triton 6
Score by quarters
Culver 2 4 5 0 – 11
Triton 19 12 17 11 – 59
Comments