LOUDONVILLE — This must be what it’s like to play basketball against a bulldozer.
Anyone matching up so far this season against the Loudonville girls has probably felt like they’ve had a death wish.
The Redbirds are 12-0 after clobbering Mid-Ohio Athletic Conference heavyweight Clear Fork 64-40 on Tuesday. It was the closest final score any team has managed against them.
With 10 games left in the regular season, Loudonville is winning by an average of 46 points per game and has triggered the second-half running clock (minimum 35-point lead) in nine of 12 contests.
Thus far, the Redbirds have turned in an overwhelming dominance rarely (if ever) seen in the Ashland area. But with that said, head coach Tyler Bates, whose 2020-21 team started that year 25-0, isn’t tooting any horns.
“We have never one time as a team said that we want to go undefeated this year; that’s not something that we’re thinking about,” he said. “We’ve been there and done that.
“We’re thinking now about, ‘How can we make as deep of a run in the tournament as we can?’ That’s going to come down to playing good teams, trying to learn from our mistakes and continuing to improve as a group.”
The 11th-year coach, whose 250th game leading LHS came in a 76-5 win over Lucas, might not be shooting off any fireworks for his squad’s explosive start, but to let it pass unnoticed would be an injustice.
Loudonville has been in full-throttle attack mode from the tip-off all season. Only once have the Redbirds not led an opponent by at least 20 points at halftime; their average advantage through two quarters is 34 points.
Some detractors have said the LHS schedule hasn’t been challenging enough. While Bates admits the second-half will test his team more than the first, one-third of the teams the Redbirds have faced thus far entered Thursday tied for either first or second place in their respective conferences.
Loudonville’s results in those games? Wins by 36 over Mount Gilead, 42 over South Central, 31 over Cardington and 24 over Clear Fork — a team that had beaten LHS each of the past two seasons.
“The voices we’re going to listen to are in this locker room, and everyone else can say whatever they want,” Bates said. “There’s going to be good, there’s going to be bad, there’s going to be people that try to discredit you. We’re going to let them talk and we’re going to listen to each other right here and just keep working.
“I would say we’ve probably cleared the bench this year for more minutes than anyone in Ohio. We’ve had the bench in for a large part of the season in the fourth quarter.”
Arguably the only teams in north central Ohio to compare to this year’s ’Birds in the last 15 seasons would be the Shelby and Buckeye Central teams of 2021-22. That also was the first full season of the running-clock rule.
That year, Shelby beat its opponents in the regular season by an average of 33 points before losing in a regional title game and finishing 27-1. The Division II Whippets had just five games decided in the regular season by fewer than 20 points.
Buckeye Central, meanwhile, suffered its only regular-season loss that year to Shelby, eventually advancing to the Division IV Final Four and finishing 26-2. The Buckettes had six wins decided in the regular season by fewer than 20 points.
For their part, the Redbirds have been suffocating on defense. They have yet to allow more than 14 points to any of their opponents’ leading scorers, and in almost half of the 48 quarters they have played this season they have allowed five points or fewer.
Bates said the biggest improvements this year have been cutting down on turnovers and team shooting.
During its 17-7 season last year, LHS shot 37 percent from the field and 25 percent from 3-point range. This winter those numbers have jumped to 45 percent and 30 percent, respectively, and the Redbirds make an average of 7.5 3-pointers a game.
The transition offense has been helped by the team’s sky-high 24.5 steals per game.
“If you feel like you have a good grasp on what the other team’s trying to do offensively and then you throw some athleticism in with that mental grasp,” Bates said, “you can get some steals and create some turnovers.”
Returning the reigning Division III Player of the Year for Ohio certainly hasn’t hurt. Redbirds senior Corri Vermilya has shown no signs of slowing down.
The 5-foot-9, Ashland University-committed guard is averaging 27.9 points, 11.8 rebounds, 4.6 assists and 8.3 steals per game.
In the same game that she recorded a quadruple-double (26 points, 19 rebounds, 10 assists, 10 steals in an 88-8 flattening of Medina Buckeye), Vermilya also broke Loudonville’s career rebounding record.
On Tuesday against Clear Fork, she joined the hard-to-reach 2,000-career-point club.
The only other area players to score more career points are 2016 Crestview graduate Renee Stimpert (2,305), 1982 Mansfield Malabar grad Francine Lewis (2,231) and 2003 Wynford product Amber Rall (2,167). Both Stimpert and Rall starred at Ashland University. The incomparable Lewis was a two-time first-team All-Big Ten pick for Ohio State in 1984 and 1985.
Vermilya feels team balance, communication and ball movement all have helped guide her to the individual heights she has reached.
“This year we have so many scoring threats offensively and so many people who make a big presence in the game,” she said. “I want to say that it’s harder to guard us as a team this year than it has been ever before.”
At her current pace, the senior could finish in the Top 10 in Ohio history in career points, Top 25 in career rebounds (currently 1,041) and Top 10 in career steals (currently 472). All of those rankings would be the best in area history, but none of them are higher on her to-do list than getting wins.
“Corri and I discussed it in the offseason and we both are on the same page — we’re really not going to worry about numbers this year,” Bates said. “We want every kid on the team being aggressive offensively, shooting the ball if they’re open.
“If the game’s over and it’s time to sub, we’re going to sub, and we’re going to kind of let the chips fall.”
Fellow seniors Sophia Spangler (10.4 ppg, 4.3 spg) and Jena Guilliams (6.3 ppg, 24 3-pointers) have been mainstays once again. The addition of Vermilya’s freshman sister, Mya Vermilya, has added a critical wrinkle as well.
The guard already is posting 15.3 points per game with a team-high 26 3-pointers. She hit five treys and had 24 points and 10 steals in her season-best effort against Central Christian.
“The ownership we’ve seen from the seniors down to the freshmen has been outstanding,” Bates said, “and that allows us as coaches to really focus on game-planning.”
It’s not lost on the coach that where this season falls in the record books will ultimately come down to his team’s finish — not its start.
Bates already had worked before the season with the Mid-Buckeye Conference on strengthening his team’s schedule by replacing two league games with tougher opponents, something rarely seen.
On Wednesday, he was able to make another schedule tweak, swapping out a second game with Mansfield Christian (an 84-18 LHS win earlier this season) with a game at Colonel Crawford (currently 11-0) on Jan. 31.
That contest will be the third leg of a set of games the Redbirds feel will truly prove where they are as the postseason looms.
Loudonville plays at Division I Ellet (7-3, beat the ‘Birds last year) on Jan. 17, then travels to Division III Warrensville Heights (9-1, ranked No. 9 in Ohio on MaxPreps) on Jan. 23 before the showdown at Colonel Crawford (No. 18 in Division III on MaxPreps).
The Redbirds currently are ranked No. 8 in Division IV on MaxPreps and Bates said they have been as high as No. 2.
“The second half of our schedule is a lot tougher than the first half was, so we’re definitely ready for that,” Vermilya said. “I think we’re going to keep finding that out — how good we can be.”
The standard is set high at Loudonville, which has four state-title teams and the only Ashland-area girls basketball team ever to play in a state championship game (the 25-3 Redbirds in 1991-92).
Even in the summer, Bates said his team was talking openly about a Final Four run; they haven’t shied away from that big-picture goal.
For a squad aiming for its sixth 20-win season in the last eight years, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
“There aren’t too many teams that I’ve coached that I’m more proud of than this team,” said Bates, just a dozen wins from his 200th career coaching victory. “These girls can look at each other and say, ‘I can trust the kid beside me, I can trust my coaches.’ Those are groups that are fun to be around.
“We know we have potential right here — if we stay focused — to do something special.”