Tipp uses big second half to cruise past Greenville

After a sluggish first half that saw the Tippecanoe boys basketball team holding a slim seven-point lead at the half, the Red Devils put together quite an impressive final 16 minutes in the second half to earn a 77-40 victory over Greenville. This completed the season sweep of the Green Wave.

With the win, the Red Devils improved to 8-2 overall and 8-1 in the Miami Valley League, sitting one game behind Butler, who still remains unbeaten. Greenville drops to 1-11 on the season.

“We knew we could be in a battle at times with them, they are a physical team,” Tipp coach Brock Moon said, “The tale of the two halves was we hit shots in the second half. We had 14 threes in the game, 10 in the second half, and that makes a big difference.”

“We also changed things defensively late in the second quarter by putting some pressure on them and that gave us a little bit of energy on both ends.”

Greenville took a 14-11 lead at the end of the first quarter with freshman Hudson Ganger coming off the bench to score a pair of buckets to lead the Red Devils.

The Tipp pressure defense mentioned did a good job against Greenville in the second quarter, holding them to seven points while the Tipp offense started to get on track. Sophomore Colin Turner had a big quarter with seven points and Preston Zumwalt added five to help give Tipp a 28-21 lead at the break.

“We played a lot of kids and kids finding new roles with the injury to CJ Bailey, that changes a lot for us,” Moon said. “There were new kids playing who haven’t played a lot of varsity minutes and they stepped up and found their groove.”

Then…the doors fell off for Greenville.

Tipp dropped 27 points in just the third quarter and their three-point shots started to fall. The Red Devils connected on six of them including three from Zumwalt and two from Larkin Thomas. Tipp pushed their lead to 55-27, heading to the fourth.

Greenville only scored six points in that third quarter when Tipp pulled away. It was another big quarter for Tipp in the fourth period as Jett Maxwell hit two threes off the bench for the Red Devils and Tipp put the Green Wave away.

“We got a lot of turnovers in the second half, and it led to some open looks in transition,” Moon said. “It was good for some kids to see some shots going down. Preston is starting to see some shots go down which is good for him.”

Zumwalt led Tipp with 17 points on the night, Ganger added 12 with 11 points each from Thomas and Turner.