Six Southwestern Indiana Teams Win IHSAA Sectionals, Castle, Bosse, Princeton Advance

Connor Richards returned and Castle outpaced Harrison 60-54 to capture the Class 4A sectional, a finish coach Brian Gibson called earned the hard way: "It took everything that we had to beat a tremendous basketball team." Castle, which had gone scoreless in the opening five minutes and trailed by 12 in the third quarter, leaned on Richards down the stretch in Evansville and pulled out the win despite a season mark listed at 8-16 in local coverage. Gibson added that the run has been about toughness: "Just adversity after adversity dumped on these kids. We'll play zero games this year without all of our varsity guys. You learn a lot about your teammates and who is going to step up."

The Original Report grouping of Southwestern Indiana winners lists six sectional champions advancing to regionals: Castle, Bosse, Princeton, Forest Park, NE Dubois and Barr-Reeve. Bosse claimed a sectional crown with a 62-52 victory over Heritage Hills, a final score provided in the same Original Report summary.

Princeton is included among the six regional qualifiers, but sources differ on the opponent and final. One account in the Original Report says Princeton routed Jasper 54-36, while a statewide scoreboard item lists Princeton 43, Washington 33 at Sectional 31 hosted at Southridge. Both reports identify Princeton as a sectional winner advancing to the regional round.

Forest Park is also listed among the Southwestern Indiana winners, with the Original Report recording a 54-41 victory over Mater Dei. That same pair of schools appears in Sports Yahoo’s baseball coverage, where Mater Dei won 9-6 over Forest Park in Class 2A Sectional 48; the baseball account notes Mater Dei built a 5-1 lead by the second inning and used contributions from Brayden Caldemyer and Drew Schapker en route to a 20-7 season mark.

NE Dubois and Barr-Reeve are named in the Original Report as sectional champions without basketball box scores attached. Barr-Reeve also appears in Sports Yahoo’s baseball recaps, where No. 2 Barr-Reeve beat Sullivan 4-3 on a Jake Pauw walk-off single in the ninth as the defending state champions in that program’s spring run.

Castle’s sectional title completed a run that included an overtime semifinal: Castle advanced to the Class 4A sectional championship with a 50-43 overtime win over North on Friday, March 6, a victory that, by one tally from long-time statistician John Harrell, came despite only a 2.9% chance to win the title before the game. That improbability and the late return of Connor Richards are the storylines that send the Knights to regionals from Evansville.

Taken together, the Original Report’s six Southwestern Indiana sectional winners advance to their respective regional brackets: Castle, Bosse, Princeton, Forest Park, NE Dubois and Barr-Reeve. Local box scores and host-school records will provide the next layer of detail as these teams prepare for regional matchups.