Shelbyville Lady Golden Bears Basketball

Douglas dominates Dragons in HHC win By BRIAN HARMON bharmon@shelbynews.com NEW PALESTINE — It wasn’t supposed to be this easy. Shelbyville took the court Saturday against a New Palestine club that had won six consecutive games and featured two dominant 6-foot post players. But that seemed to matter little to Katie Douglas, Shelbyville’s own 6-foot center, as she scored a career-high 27 points to lead the Golden Bears to a 63-42 win. Class 3A, No. 4-ranked Shelbyville improved to 6-1 overall and 3-0 in the Hoosier Heritage Conference. New Palestine dropped to 7-3 overall and 2-1 in the HHC. New Palestine’s tall, but especially thin, frontline of Gabrielle Allison (6-1) and Nicole Allison (6-0) were held to a combined eight points after averaging 25 points between them in the Dragons’ first nine games. They apparently hadn’t faced a player like Douglas, a junior with a solid all-around game. Saturday, the Allisons got in foul trouble early on attempting to guard Douglas and were ineffective on the offensive end. “They were not strong at all,” said Douglas. “They didn’t push back at all, so it wasn’t that hard.” Said Shelbyville coach John Fair, “I was somewhat surprised how easily, not only were we getting the ball down low, but how easily we were scoring down low.” Shelbyville led for most of the first half by as much as eight points, but a 5-0 New Palestine run at the end of the second period cut the Golden Bears’ lead to 30-27 at halftime. Douglas had a team-high 11 points at halftime, but it was her play in the third period that broke the Dragons’ back. With Shelbyville ahead 31-29 early in the third period, Douglas scored 14 points during an 18-6 Golden Bears’ scoring run that effectively put the game out of New Palestine’s reach. “It was close at the time and I just wanted to get a lead. I hit my shots and I did what I had to do,” Douglas said. Shelbyville led 49-35 at the end of the third period and New Palestine never threatened the rest of the way. The Golden Bears outscored the host Dragons 33-15 in the second half. “Douglas was the key in the game,” New Palestine coach Al Cooper said. “She took it to us tough and we knew she would. We figured they’d try to slam it into her in the post — (Fair) was trying to establish her against our big kids and our big kids didn’t respond. Once Douglas took over inside, we were in trouble.” Cooper also felt that his team missed too many easy shots, as evidenced by the Dragons’ 31 percent (15 of 47) field goal shooting. Shelbyville played most of the game in a half-court defense — something of a change for this club. “I think our kids get tired of hearing that, ‘Well, they’re just a pressing team, they can’t do anything in the half court.’ You know, today and in the game against (Columbus) East, we’ve shown that, hey we can play in the half court. We can do some other things. We don’t have to rely on our press as much as we had to in the past.” Shelbyville beat Columbus East 65-60 last Thursday. Saturday’s win left Shelbyville as the only HHC team without a conference loss. It’s conceivable that the Golden Bears could sweep the rest of their conference games, which would give them their first-ever HHC championship. “I don’t want to say we won the conference, but it is in our control,” Douglas said. Fair agreed, saying, “I’m a control freak and I don’t want to be down in the conference and have to depend on something I can’t control. So, we are in control now and we can win it if we win out.” Each HHC team plays a seven-game conference schedule. Shelbyville has conference matchups remaining with Yorktown (0-8 overall, 0-3 HHC), Rushville (2-5, 1-2), Mount Vernon (5-4, 2-1) and Delta (5-2, 1-1). For now, though, Shelbyville’s focus is on Morristown. The Yellow Jackets (4-3) travel to Shelbyville Tuesday.