South 'bit their toenails off,' will play for state title again

By Rex Kirts

When former South coach Bill Springer, now in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, really liked the toughness of a team, he would say, "They'd bite your toenails off."
Saturday night in the class 4A semistate at Southport, the Panthers (25-2) bit the toenails off Indianapolis North Central, 76-66.
Now they'll be playing for the state championship for the second time in three years (they won in 2009), taking on Kokomo (23-2) Saturday at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
They'll be doing because J.R. Holmes, the Panther coach of 29 years, knows a lot about how to make teams tough and how to set them up for a ball game. He had to toughen the Panthers up after a lacklustre sectional performance against Bloomington North, and he had to change some things to counter North Central's physical superiority in speed.
SOUTH'S PLAYERS listened, learned and executed. North Central had numerous outstanding individuals, but South had a little more in the team department and enough toughness to win.
And the Panthers aren't too bad individually, either.
They have the remarkable Dee Davis, who scored a career high 31 points, including 20 in the first half as he dazzled NC's defenders with moves around the hoop. Davis hit 12 of his 16 shots to lead a team that shot 59 per cent for the game. He also had four rebounds.
They have the resilient Spencer Turner, who scored 21 of his 24 points in the second half. He made a living at the free throw line, going 12 of 13 for the game and 7 of 8 in the fourth quarter. Frustrated by NC's expected tight defense, he kept working and got free to drain a couple of 3-point baskets in the second half. He pulled down six rebounds, too.
The Panthers also have Joey Forney, who takes some lickings and keeps on ticking. He had six points and seven rebounds this night.
THEY HAVE Ben Stowell, who scored eight points, and Desmond Marks, who had three points and four rebounds and didn't play nearly as much as usual because he had the flu recently.
They have sub Michael Bower, who played a lot in place of Marks and had four points and five rebounds.
"Dee did what Dee does," Holmes said. "Dee was good at the start, and Spencer was good as the game went along. And we got some baskets from Stowell, Bower, Forney.
"Our kids showed some moxie. We planned on going at them, challenging them. We came here as men and are leaving as men."
Speaking of his 20-point first half, Davis said he "was just trying to help my team win. I felt like I had to turn my game up." That took some doing because NC was pounding on him pretty good and guarding him with fresh players.
"We had a lot of energy," Davis said. "We knew we needed only one more to make the show. We wanted to be aggressive, get them in foul trouble.
"I don't think this is a surprise. We just came in prepared. We didn't get to play them last year."
South's defeat in the regional last year left it one game short of playing North Central in the semistate. North Central went on to win state.
TURNER, WHO went hard to the basket more than usual, said he didn't start feeling good about the Panthers' chances to win until "there was about two minutes remaining, once they started fouling more."
The Panthers won, Turner said, because it had heart. "The hustle plays, all the loose balls. Switching to the zone helped us a lot."
North Central came in with a couple of big regional wins and had to feel good about itself, with a potent and fast-moving offense. Forney said South's win was not a surprise, though.
"We felt like we could compete with them. We rebounded well. We had a lot of turnovers but handled the ball at the right time and hit our free throws (21 of 25)."
Stowell said, "Pretty awesome," of the victory. "It's well deserved for all these guys. When everyone knows his role and executes, good things happen. We knew we had to play as a team."
THE KEY, MARKS SAID, "was being tougher than them. This shows we can play with anybody." Another key was keeping NC off the boards, Marks said. North Central got some putbacks but also missed a bunch of them.
"We knew Johnson and Smith would get their points, so we had to keep them (the others) off the boards."
Bower said South won because of "the discipline part of it. North Central was on the court arguing with each other.
"We knew all week we could play with them. It was not a matter of being scared or intimidated." South had a lot of trouble taking care of the ball, turning it over 22 times to 11 for North Central (22-3), but made up for some of that by out-rebounding NC, 32-25.
It was North Central's great ability to cause turnovers that forced Holmes to alter his offense slightly. He wanted the Panthers to attack NC straight ahead and not go east-west with the ball. He also cut down on the number of sets the Panthers run. The strategy succeeded in drawing a lot of fouls, and three NC starters fouled out.
DEFENSIVELY, SOUTH started with man-to-man, but the second half saw a lot of zones, including some 2-3, some triangle-and-two on NC stars D'Valuntes Smith-Rivera and Ronnie Johnson, some box-and-one. Most of the first half, North Central was out of synch offensively but stayed close, South leading 34-32, by capitalizing on turnovers.
When the clock reached zero and South was ahead, it was the culmination of a good plan coming together.
The third quarter is a good example of South doing what it needed to do to win. North Central rallied to take the lead a couple of times, but each time South took NC's best shot and counter-attacked. It was gladiators at their finest.
With 1:06 left in the quarter, Turner hit a 3-pointer for a 52-49 lead, and South led the rest of the way.
SIBLING NOTE: South assistant coach Kyle Simpson had a few mixed feelings afterward. "It's hard when my brother Jeremy is on the losing side," Kyle said. His brother is a freshman coach at North Central.