Southmont boys basketball coach Michael Byrum has talked all season long about treating every game like a championship game. That mindset is something that he hopes will now pay off as his Mounties are getting ready to open up post-season play in the Class 2A Sectional 44 hosted at Greencastle next week. The Mounties drew the bye into the semi-finals on Friday and will play the North Putnam Cougars who defeated Cloverdale 60-43 on Tuesday.
Southmont enters post-season play with a record of 9-12 but has won three out of their final four games to close the regular season. The Mounties on Jan. 29 were defeated by North Putnam 53-39. With the extra time off before Friday, which is something the Mounties haven’t had much of this season, Byrum notes how he and his team will use it to the best of their ability to make sure they’re ready to go.
“No matter what the draw is I think you can find both positives and negatives about it really for any team,” he said. “We’re going to use this week to try and rest up while also still working on ourselves because we know there’s some things we still need to get better at. With our schedule especially this month, we’ve played so many games that we’ve barely had time to practice. It’s going to be nice to have some time to just focus on ourselves and making sure we’re ready for next Friday.”
The Mounties played a stretch of their schedule that almost no boys basketball team can say they played by playing seven games in 13 days from Jan. 26 to Feb. 8. During that stretch they played the likes of Lebanon, Tri-West, Parke Heritage, North Putnam and concluded a postponed game with Seeger.
Scoring wise for the Mounties this season, the guard duo of Vince Reimondo and Hayden Hess have led the team in scoring with both averaging right around 10 points per game. Evan Watson scores eight with Austin Foley and Aaron McMasters scoring five and six points respectively.
As far as who the Cougars go, Byrum notes that North Putnam love to shoot the three ball and that’s something that his team will have to guard against.
“We know that we’re going to have to run whoever we play off of that three-point line,” he said. “It’s going to come down to us on the defensive side having good close outs and not giving them much space. Going into next week we have to be locked in on our scouting reports and their personnel. Once we find out who we’ll play, that’s when we can take a deep dive to make sure that we know our game plan and how to attack it.”
