COLUMBUS — Columbus East pressed Madison into one of its worst offensive performances of the season and rolled to a 78-44 win in girls basketball on Saturday.
East honored retiring head coach Danny Brown and assistant coach Willie Humes — a former Madison head coach — before the game and then dominated the Cubs in every aspect of the contest over the next 32 minutes. The Olympians led by 10 after the first quarter and expanded its margin from there.
“That was probably the best pressure that we’ve seen this year. They were long, they were fast to the ball and they really did a good job of getting our heads down,” Madison coach Adam Dennis said. “And I thought they were allowed to be a little physical with us. When we play an athletic team that’s long and strong and it’s allowed to be physical with us, it makes things really hard.”
Madison didn’t shoot the ball terribly, hitting on 36% (18-for-50) for the game and 3-of-14 (21%) from 3-point range. But the Cubs also turned the ball over a whopping 35 times on 21 steals, leading to 43 Columbus East points and ruining any chance Madison had at staying in the game.
Eleven of those turnovers came in the first quarter as Columbus East built a 16-6 lead. The Olympians forced six more in the second quarter and led 39-19 at the break.
Madison has relied on its defense all season, holding opponents to just 42.5 points per game on average. But with East spending much of the game in transition, the Cubs’ defense never got a chance to set up.
“We saw on film that they’re going to try really hard to cheat the passing lanes which should play to our advantage,” Dennis said. “But where normally we can get a layup or an open shot, we weren’t able to get the ball in the right place.
“There’s going to be a lot of teams that play today, in high school and college, who are going to lose and several of them are going to get thumped. And that’s what happened to us today.”
Indiana State-bound Saige Stahl had a monster game for the Olympians, scoring 40 points on 15-of-22 shooting and pulling down 15 rebounds while recording five steals. Leah Bachman added 11 points and eight rebounds for East.
Madison’s Juliana Davis couldn’t match Stahl, but the freshman still had the best game of her young career, scoring 22 points while adding 10 rebounds, three assists and five steals. No other Cub had more than seven points with Cam Cahall scoring seven and grabbing eight rebounds.
Madison, now 9-9 on the season, travels to North Harrison on Tuesday and then closes out the regular season at Class A No. 4 Trinity Lutheran on Thursday.
