Valley Faces Up-Tempo, Athletic Muncie Central Team
Posted
Mark Howe-mhowe@timesuniononline.com
AKRON – Muncie Central, Tippecanoe Valley’s regional opponent, likes to play an up-tempo game with the athletes it can put on the floor. The Lady Bearcats are led by junior Jayla Scaife, who averages a double-double with 21.3 points and 12.3 rebounds per game. The University of Dayton verbal commit had a season-high 40 points in a 51-50 loss to conference champion Richmond on Nov. 29, has scored at least 20 points in 13 games, and had 29 in the sectional championship game against Blackford. Muncie Central is also getting contributions from juniors Ke’Chell Tate and Fa’Tara Davis, who combine for 15.8 points and 8.4 rebounds per contest. Senior Savannah Jackson adds another 5.7 points and 5.2 rebounds. “(Scaife’s) pretty impressive on film. She’s going to be a tough matchup for us,” Valley head coach Chris Kindig said. “We’re going to have to figure out a way to slow her down. She’s really good as far as going after offensive rebounds, and actually they have a lot of girls who are good rebounders. So one of the keys for us, obviously, will be to try and keep them off the boards. “We can’t allow (Scaife) to get the ball in the painted area and do whatever she wants to do with it. We are going to have to work very hard to maybe push her out to 10 to 12 feet away from the basket, she’s a little less effective out there. “In general, they’re fairly quick and they like to press. They like to get after it in the half-court game and they like and up-and-down game. Although we don’t necessarily mind playing that way, we’re going to have to slow them down, and make them play more of a half-court game, and make them make three, four or five passes every trip down the floor. “So another key for us will be to take care of the basketball against their press and the half-court defense and not turn it over, especially out front where we want the chance to set our defense up. So taking care of the basketball and taking care of (Scaife) are going to be two big keys for us.” Muncie Central finished in a tie for second in the North Central Conference, which produced three sectional champions (Richmond and McCutcheon). Two other conference teams were eliminated from the same the sectional, when third-place Marion beat the fourth-place team, Kokomo, then fifth-place McCutcheon beat Marion in the final. After starting the season 5-4, Muncie Central has won 13 of 14 games and has a current eight-game winning streak. The Lady Bearcats come in to regional play ranked 16th in Class 3A. Statistically, the Lady Bearcats and Lady Vikings are very similar. Valley averages 55.3 points a game, and Central comes in a 54.7. Defensively, Valley gives up 39.9 points a game, Central 42.1. “If you look at the stats, and compare them to where we’re at, they’re really pretty close,” Kindig said. “But there’s not a lot of comparison as far as who they’ve played and who we’ve played. Sometimes you get a feel for a team if you have some common opponents, but in this case you really can’t. “But the bottom line is we’re going to have to rebound the basketball, probably better than we’ve done all year. It’s not going to be a situation where we can just go to the boards and outjump somebody. They’re very athletic, they like to go coast-to-coast, they want to play a fast game and we’re going to have to find a way to slow that down a little bit.” With a win, Valley would play either Fort Wayne-Concordia or the de facto home team for this tournament, Norwell. Concordia is led in scoring by senior Dejour Young at 18.7 points a game and sophomore Shania Kelly at 10.5 per contest. The Lady Cadets own a 19-7 record on the season and finished third in the Summit League. Norwell, located just 14-1/2 miles west of the Bellmont campus, is the 11th-ranked team in 3A and comes in to the weekend with an 18-7 record. The Lady Knights finished third in the Northeast Hoosier Conference and own a 57-42 win over Concordia on Nov. 25.
