By GREG MENGELT
That goes double for a team that had won 26 games coming into Saturday’s Class 3A state championship game at Gainbridge Fieldhosue in Indianapolis. Reigning state champion Silver Creek expected to go up and have a chance to win another state championship against the same team it beat a year ago.
But it wasn’t the same South Bend Washington team. This team was special. The previous week, the top-ranked Panthers beat No. 2 Garrett by 27 points. They’ve been doing this to teams all year.
Silver Creek coach Scott Schoen said he’s coached against some great teams, including state championship teams (a Kelly Farris-led Heritage Christian team and the 28-1 Evansville Memorial team in 2011), but the Panthers are “by far” the best he’s ever seen. They may be the best team in 3A history, he argued.
“They’re one of the best teams in the nation and they proved it,” Schoen said. “It felt like we were playing the Fever.”
In fact, freshman Kira Reynolds out-rebounded Silver Creek by herself. She finished with 17 points and a record 24 rebounds in the victory. She’s one of the major differences in the 2021 state runners-up and the 2022 state champions.
“This team we played on Saturday, hands down is far better (than last year),” Schoen said. “It was the perfect storm in that we beat them last year. We had a bullseye on us. Then Emme (Rooney) tears her ACL a minute into the game. It just went sideways, but I’m so proud of our girls and the way they dealt with it. They’re high-character kids.”
While most of the state watched the second half with admiration for the way Silver Creek’s players handled themselves — making the most of a second state finals appearance and giving it their all for 32 minutes instead of pouting or losing focus — some used social media to attack the Dragons. Schoen said some on social media said it looked like his team didn’t care that it was suffering an historic loss.
“First of all, social media is the devil,” he said. “What people don’t understand, in the locker room, there wasn’t a dry eye after the game. We had the expectations that we would go up there and compete.”
Any hope of that vanished with a 27-point Washington scoring run and a 51-16 halftime deficit. Going into the locker room, Schoen had to decide how to approach his players.
“There was no ‘win one for the Gipper’ speech,” he said. “You just had to be honest. This was not longer about winning a basketball game. I told them, ‘Let’s just go out and compete for a half.’ They found the love for each other. They care about each other. The score was irrelevant. They enjoyed their final moments together on a basketball court.
Kynidi Mason-Striverson led the Dragons with 10 points in her final game before heading to Evansville to star for the Purple Aces. After the postgame press conference, WLKY reporter Dominique Yates tweeted a clip of Mason-Striverson trying to describe what it meant to play with her four senior classmates one final time.
“We have had so much chemistry and we have worked so hard,” she said in the clip that had 295 likes by Monday evening. “I think that shows, because some people who haven’t played in the last years, they still came in and they’re always ready to roll. Nobody knew what was going to happen to Emme tonight and every single player who came in stepped up. … I think that says a lot about our coaches, I think that says a lot about our leaders, I think that says a lot about our people, in general. I think we always think of it as playing for something bigger.”
Rooney, who had played huge roles in the Dragons’ regional and semistate championship, tore her ACL but was named the Patricia L. Roy Mental Attitude Award recipient and scholar.
Schoen said he left Indianapolis as proud of his team as if it had repeated as state champions.
“It says a lot about them,” he said. “I told them after the game that if a 58-point loss in the state championship is the worst thing that every happens to you, you’ll have a really great life.”
