CORYDON
Brownstown Central and Corydon Central entered Saturday night’s boys basketball game on the Panthers’ court with nearly opposite records, so it didn’t come as any great surprise that the Braves coasted to an easy win.
The Braves scored the first nine points of the game, led 22-9 at the end of the first period, 46-18 at the half, then outscored the Panthers 23-0 in the third quarter and came home with an 81-29 victory.
Braves coach Dave Benter was hoping his team could get off to a quick start, and Brownstown dominated from the start with a layup by Zach McCory three minutes into the game making the score 9-0.
“You don’t want to come out and overlook anybody,” Benter said. “It took us a couple minutes to get going, but once we got going I thought our defense led us getting into a flow offensively with turnovers and layups. We got some transition baskets.”
The Braves forced the Panthers into 17 turnovers, while they committed only six.
Corydon did not scored back-to-back baskets until the fourth period.
“They’re young — they’re rebuilding right now, and our guys didn’t overlook them,” Benter said. “I thought we came out and played with a lot of energy throughout the game.”
There aren’t any seniors on the Corydon roster, and coach Jamie Kolkmeier started three juniors, one sophomore and one freshman, and the Braves opened with three seniors and two juniors.
While McCory and Jacoby Shade had two baskets each in the early going, it was Carson Lambring who got hot later in the period with three goals, including two 3-pointers that helped the visitors to the 22-9 lead.
Shade added three more buckets in the second period, and Lambring, Matthew Nierman and Gavin Bane stroked the nets from 3-point range and Brownstown’s lead increased to 28 points at the half.
Things only got worse for the Panthers in the third period when they missed all nine of their field goal attempts.
Lambring added three 3-pointers, while Shoemaker added seven points as the Braves increased their lead.
“We didn’t feel they had anyone who could guard Zach or Cam inside, so we really wanted to look at that,” Benter said. “We got so many transition baskets. We were really good with our ball movement.”
The Braves made 32 of 56 shots from the floor. Corydon made only 12 of 41.
Lambring scored a career-high 24 points on six 3-pointers and three deuces.
Shade and Shoemaker added 11 points each.
A total of 13 players saw action for the Braves, and 10 of them scored as Benter substituted throughout the game.
Shade had seven rebounds as the Braves held a 23-15 advantage on the boards.
Brownstown sits on top of the Mid-Southern Conference at 7-0 and is 15-1 overall, while Corydon is 1-4 in the MSC and 1-14 on the season.
The Braves went 7-1 in January and scored 90 points or more in two of those games, and in the 80s in two other games.
With the girls sectionals scheduled this week, there are changes to the boys schedules.
The Braves will play host to Columbus East on Thursday night and will travel to Clarksville on Saturday afternoon.