SHELBYVILLE — Paging Bud Shippee.
Seymour’s resident basketball historian can expect a few phone calls over the coming days as interested fans seek an answer to a question forced on the world by Seymour’s boys basketball team on Tuesday night.
When was the last time the Owls held an opponent under 20 points?
Inquiring fans want to know after a stunning defensive performance led Seymour (14-6) to a dominant 54-18 victory over home-standing Shelbyville (5-16).
Going back to 1993, the only result approaching Tuesday night’s was a 58-20 win by the Owls over Whiteland in December of 2005.
“We don’t set out to keep teams to a certain amount, we just try to have good possessions on both ends of the court,” Seymour head coach Kirk Manns said. “Defense is the hard part of basketball and our guys have really taken to it. Our guys have a lot of confidence in what they can accomplish together on defense.”
For the second time in two weeks, Seymour held an opponent to zero points in a quarter. The Owls held South Ripley scoreless in the fourth quarter of a 55-26 win on Feb. 10.
On Tuesday night, Seymour pulled the same defensive trick in the first quarter, forcing Shelbyville into six turnovers and zero-for-6 shooting in the first eight minutes.
Seymour didn’t exactly start well itself, turning the ball over four times in the first three minutes of the game.
“We had a slow start, that happens from time to time,” Manns said. “But during that stretch, we guarded very well and that gave us a chance to recover.”
Following the slow start, the Owls made seven of their next 10 shots — all of them layups of one variety or another — to take a 14-0 lead.
By halftime, Seymour led 34-10 and would eventually build the gap to 40 points midway through the third quarter when a Landon Fritsch 3-pointer bumped the score to 50-10.
The Owls tripped the mercy-rule running clock for the third time in four games and secured their 14th victory of the season, just the fifth time in the last 30 years a Seymour team has reached that win total.
“We got a lot of good basketball out of a lot of guys tonight,” Manns said. “We hope we can get everyone at their best over the next few weeks.”
Eight different Owls scored, with senior Marcus Brooks leading with 12 points. Fritsch added 10 points, followed by Charlie Longmeier with nine and Andrew Levine with eight.
The scoreless first quarter on Tuesday night ran the Seymour defense’s string of single-digit quarters to nine straight … a streak that ended in the second quarter when Shelbyville scored 10 points.
In the second half, however, the Owls started a new run by holding the Bears to two and six points in the third and fourth quarters.
Seymour ends its regular season with a trip to Silver Creek (10-11).