Carrollton captures consolation championship at Winchester Tourney over Rushville-Industry
WINCHESTER - The Carrollton Hawks go 3-1 and take home the consolation championship trophy at the 94th annual Winchester Invitational Tournament as they defeated the Rushville-Industry Rockets 57-52 on Saturday.
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After getting upset by Pleasant Hill in the first round Carrollton head coach Jeff Krumwiede felt that it was immense for his team to win their remaining games.
“It’s what it had to be. We had to get these last three and bring some respect back after getting upset,” Krumwiede said.
The Hawks had a balanced scoring attack led by Luke Gillingham’s 19 points with Cole Brannan following up with 15 and Jerrett Smith adding 14. Manning Plater tallied 19 points to lead Rushville.
Both teams started out hot from the field, especially from outside as the Hawks and Rockets hit two three-pointers each early in the first quarter.
Jeremy Watson finished with eight points in the game, two of them on three-pointers.
Midway through the first quarter Plater picked up his second foul and sat through the rest of the half on an offense-defense rotation.
The Hawks took advantage of his absence as they took a 13-9 lead going into the second quarter.
Late in the first half Carrollton took the largest lead of the game at 28-18 and were ahead by nine close to halftime, but Plater sank a triple at the buzzer to cut the lead to 31-25.
Coach Krumwiede was not happy about how that sequence played out.
“We made it pretty easy at times,” Krumwiede said. “Particularly at the end of the half when I was very frustrated when Plater got the three to get that momentum swing that they needed going into halftime.”
The Rockets later cut the Hawks lead down to two in the third quarter, but Brannan and Smith knocked down several shots at the top of the key to repel Rushville-Industry.
Carrollton led 44-36 going into the fourth quarter and things got interesting with under four minutes to play.
Kyle Ward nailed a trey that made it a one point game, but on the ensuing Hawks possession Gillingham answered back with a three of his own that made the score 51-47 with under two minutes left.
Carrollton went up 53-47 on a pair of Gillingham free throws with under a minute to go, but the Rockets cut it to three with another triple, this time from Joe Ward.
Brannan on the next Hawks possession was fouled and he calmly sank both free throws and later Gillingham did as well to put the game out of reach.
Carrollton improves to 13-3 on the season and will host North Greene and Pleasant Hill on Tuesday and Friday this upcoming week, respectively.
Even though they are 13-3, the Hawks feel they have come up short expectation-wise in the Waverly Holiday Tournament and the Winchester Invitational Tournament.
They placed 5th at Waverly when they were the one seed and 6th at Winchester as the fourth seed, but Krumwiede believes the Hawks can right their ship by learning from their past results.
“We have a conference race, the Beardstown Tournament, and a postseason still left where we can learn the lessons from our underachieving in these two tournaments and hopefully achieve or overachieve in those,” Krumwiede said.
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