Lake Central beats Noblesville to punch ticket to state. 'We have great players here, too'

LAPORTE — We should have seen it coming. Maybe not to the tune of a 52-36 Lake Central win over Noblesville in Saturday's Class 4A semistate championship game, but in hindsight, the Indians presented a perfect foil to the powerhouse from Hamilton County.

Lake Central is accustomed to facing the sort of pressure Noblesville applies through its vaunted 1-3-1 zone, bringing both the athleticism to beat it and the shooters to take advantage once they break through. LC caught a glimpse of it during last year's Limestone Classic, coach Joe Huppenthal said, and knew better than to allow the Millers to heat them up and begin generating turnovers. "I told them if we can keep this thing (the turnover total) under 10, we'll be in good shape."

A task that defines "easier said than done" actually looked rather easy for the Indians, whose patience once they crossed the timeline further wore down an already weary opponent and resulted in a 10-of-19 mark from 3 — with most of those attempts going uncontested as Noblesville scrambled to close out on shooters.

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Kennedie Burks (12 points) and Ayla Krygier (11 points) both hit three, Riley Milausnic (six points) and Vanessa Wimberly (10 points) both tacked on a pair.

Aniyah Bishop scored a team-high 13 points for LC, which shot 38% from the field.

"Good gosh. You know what? All these kids we have — we have a team. T-E-A-M," Huppenthal said. "We don't have a kid averaging 10 points and I'm tired of hearing we don't have a Division I player, all that stuff. We have players and hopefully we wake some people up. I'm not saying we don't get respect, but (they should know) we have great players here, too."

Following Saturday's semistate swing through Homestead and Noblesville, the Indians should have everyone's full and undivided attention entering next weekend's 4A championship game vs. Lawrence Central.

"LC just flat-out out-played us," Noblesville coach Donna Buckley said. "(Huppenthal) had a great gameplan, all those things. … When you make a mistake against them, they're really going to make you pay."

For as good as Lake Central's shooters were, they were maybe even better defensively, limiting Noblesville to just 30% shooting (13-for-44) with a 4-for-19 mark from 3.

That defensive effort was led once again by Nadia Clayton. A few hours removed from shutting down Homestead's Myah Epps — one of the state's top sophomores — Clayton largely shut down Noblesville's Meredith Tippner, limiting the multi-sport standout to 15 points (seemed like most of her points came after Clayton had fouled out) and forcing three turnovers.

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"That girl is a dog," Huppenthal said. "She doesn't get the credit she deserves and every night, she guards the toughest player on the other team and does her job, then everybody else feeds off it and it makes things easy."

Asked about Clayton's performance, Buckley said: "She did a great job being physical and trying to get Tipp off her mark and just trying to force us away from the basket. They did an outstanding job of really taking us out of what we were trying to do on both ends of the floor."

Lake Central (26-4) advances to face Lawrence Central in Saturday's championship game. The Indians, who are making their first finals appearance since 1998, lost to the Bears, 51-38, at the Limestone Classic in December.

Noblesville, which picked up 14 points from Reagan Wilson, finishes the season 18-9.

Follow Brian Haenchen on Twitter at @Brian_Haenchen.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IHSAA girls basketball: Lake Central beats Noblesville in 4A semifinals