Winter break games were a blast (unless you played against the Carmel Greyhounds), and now we are back and have played two games into this new semester. Let’s take a peek at the most recent games and reacquaint ourselves with the Greyhounds out of break. 

If you think this is the same Carmel Greyhounds team that lost to Zionsville and Homestead, you’re an idiot. This Greyhounds team had its fair share of early struggles, but this new Hounds team has answered nearly all of the questions that we had early in the year. Winning all three of their winter break games, the Hounds were scorching hot heading out of break, and had worked their way all the way back to number one in 4a. Over winter break, the Hounds crushed Valpo (current number 4 in 4a), won a slugfest with New Albany, and blew past the Anderson Indians. 

The first game of this weekend was against Center Grove on friday. While everyone knew the Hounds would win coming into the game, nobody thought they would dominate like they did. The Greyhounds stormed past the Trojans 44-20, in a game where buckets were at a premium. The Hounds only allowed one point in the first quarter to the Trojans, six in the second, and two points in the third before allowing 11 in the fourth. Total defensive domination was the name of the game on Friday night, but the Hounds offense certainly did not struggle. Sam Orme was the captain of the offense scoring 18, while Pete Suder chipped in with 8. This guard combo was especially important with the absence of Josh Whack, and the two were able to help fill the void Whack left defensively. However the major contributor to shutting down the Trojans was Garway Dual. Dual led the Hounds with 2 blocks, 2 steals, and 5 deflections. Dual also filled in 6 points, and did all of this in less than 17 minutes of game action. Another key contributor was Jared Bonds who was filling in for Charlie Williams who was out due to illness. Bonds had 6 points, 2 blocks, and 6 total rebounds. 5 (I repeat), 5 of Bonds’ rebounds were offensive boards, and 4 of those rebounds led to second chance points, a luxury the Hounds don’t always have with all the attention Charlie Williams draws. The only noteworthy takeaway from Friday night was that it marked Coach Ryan Osborne’s 100th win in the program, so a huge congratulations to him. Overall the Friday night game against CG was boring to watch, yet Saturday proved to be the opposite.

#1 @ #3 is always an excitingly ranked matchup. Especially when it comes to two teams just 10 minutes from each other, and with enough history between them to fill a book. On a night with icy roads and sidewalks, it did not appear to scare anyone away as Westfield High School was sold out with standing room only remaining. Carmel was once again without Josh Whack and Charlie Williams, although both were in attendance and sitting on the bench. In what was a back and forth first half, the Greyhounds led by 5 at the midway point. It wasn’t until an early scoring drought in the third quarter that Braden Smith, Cam Haffner, and the Westfield Shamrocks made their run. The Rocks ended with as large as an 8-point lead, which the Greyhounds would storm back to tie up with just a minute to play. With 40 seconds left, Jared Bonds hit two free throws to take the lead by 1 point on the Shamrocks, before Braden Smith (Purdue Commit) went the other way, hitting a layup with 13 seconds remaining to take the lead. Pete Suder got the ball on the inbound for the Greyhounds and went the other way, diving and slinging the ball into the corner on the Greyhounds side to a wide open Sam Orme. However this left the now infamous “out-of-bounds” call. I captured the play from my phone and was standing mere feet from where Suder leapt out of bounds, and got a clear shot on my phone. The clear verdict: Pete Suder was at no point in possession of the ball while out of bounds. The Shamrocks got the ball back and sent Smith to the line where he missed the lone foul shot. The Hounds got the ball back with 5.8 seconds to go, however a deflection from Smith gave the Hounds the ball with ¾ of the court to go, and just 4.1 seconds left. The play the Hounds ran will live forever in the heads of Coach Ryan Osborne and Pete Suder. Suder took the ball and brought it up the court quickly, but not without a few hesitations, he threw the ball to Jared Bonds with under a second left, and Bonds didn’t catch the ball until there was 0.2 seconds left on the clock. Bonds took an ill-advised dribble and went to dunk the ball, but even if he had caught and released the ball, it still wouldn’t have counted. The photo of Pete Suder inbounds has gone semi-viral since this game and has circulated greatly within the Carmel Athletics community. However if you ask Pete Suder or Coach Ryan Osborne, I would have to bet that they’d just like to move on to their matters this week against Cathedral then dwell on the final seconds at Westfield. 

After all, if a completely healthy Westfield team can only beat a sick Carmel team at home by 1 point, how much does that say if the Hounds get everyone back for a run at the Shamrocks again at a neutral court for the tournament in March? Only time will tell how people look back at this Westfield game, and whether it was a precursor to larger things for either team. My big takeaway from this weekend and all of winter break for the Carmel Greyhounds Men’s Basketball team: this might be one of the best teams to ever play at Carmel, and we are finally starting to see just how good this team can be. If not the best, this team is certainly the deepest we have ever seen, and once again only time will tell how this team goes down in the record books; but I think you’re going to like the results.