Crawfordsville boys basketball needed a bounce back win as they hosted Lafayette Central Catholic on Wednesday.
The Knights and Athenians battled through three quarters with CHS trailing by a single point, 44-43. Then the Athenians caught fire as they scored the first 12 points of the quarter and held the Knights without a point until the 3:06 mark in the final period.
Crawfordsville would go on to defeat the Knights by a 64-55 final score for their 15th win of the season.
“I’m just really proud of our guys for continuing to battle all night,” Athenian coach David Pierce said. “When they were tired the most at the beginning of that fourth quarter we went to our 1-3-1 trap and it threw them off. They started to miss shots from the outside and we were able to get out and run.”
Ian Hensley who had struggled scoring the last few games for the Athenians got back to normal, scoring a team-high 22 points and grabbed 11 rebounds. Alex Kellerman added 17, while Ziair Morgan scored 11. That trio, along with senior Alex Hernandez, earned praise from Pierce.
“Alex guarded their best player (Clark Barrett) who normally scores 20 a game and held him to eight tonight,” Pierce said. “Ian had a heck of a game getting back to his normal self and AK (Kellerman) was big for us scoring the way he did and grabbed six rebounds and didn’t turn it over at all. Ziair added 11 and ran the show for us for most of the night. It was an overall good team win and we shot the ball a lot better than we have been.”
Central Catholic had four guys score the entire game and Clark Obermiller led all scorers with 25. Tanner Fields who averages right around nine a contest for the Knights scored 20, while Clark Barrett scored eight. Alex Hardebeck rounded out the scoring with two.
Hensley does a little bit of everything for CHS and while he normally doesn’t go through a slump like he had over the last few games, Pierce noted how not only how good it was to see Hensley play well, but also the hard work he put into helping the Athenians get back in the win column.
“He had an uncharacteristic last few games,” Pierce said. “We joke that he never has back to back bad games. Well now its happened once in his four-year career. He worked extremely hard to get those 11 rebounds and attacked the basket and just stepped up like we know he can.”
Pierce also gave credit to Cale Coursey who has been battling injury all season.
Coursey drilled a three in the final seconds of the first half to give the Athenians a 33-30 lead and another later in the the third quarter.
"He's been injured for months, but he's tough as nails and tonight his effort on both ends was huge," Pierce said. "He's not quite 100% yet but him coming off the bench and doing what he did was a huge spark for us."
Crawfordsville improves to 15-5 on the season and will get ready for Friday when they host Danville. Not only will it be senior night for the Athenians, they hope to spoil a Danville victory that would secure the Warriors a share of the Sagamore Conference title. The Athenians also are looking for redemption for last year’s sectional championship loss when the Warriors were victorious on a game-winning three.
“It’s going to be a really good game and both teams are going to bring it,” Pierce said. “We’ll do things to hopefully give them fits and I think we’ll both play good defense. It’s going to come down to hitting shots. Our shooting is really starting to come around and we’re even better than what we’ve been showing. Hopefully it comes toghether on Friday.”
Crawfordsville 64, Lafayette Central Catholic 55
Score by Quarters
CHS 18 15 10 21 - 64
CC 11 19 14 11 - 55
Crawfordsville (15-5)
FG-FGA FT-FTA PTS:
Ziair Morgan 4-7 1-3 11, Alex Kellerman 8-15 0-0 17, Ian Hensley 8-13 4-4 22, Gavin Kenny 0-1 0-0 0, Cale Coursey 2-6 0-0 6, Alex Hernandez 2-4 2-4 6, Mekhi Wallace 1-2 0-0 2; Totals 25-54 7-11 64
Central Catholic (12-8)
Clark Barrett 3-9 0-4 8, Clark Obermiller 11-13 0-0 25, Tanner Fields 7-15 4-5 20, Albert Schwartz 0-3 0-0 0, Ben Mazur 0-4 0-0 0, Alex Hardebeck 1-1 0-0 2; Totals 23-53 4-9 55
3-Pt Shooting: CHS 7-17 (Coursey 2, Morgan 2, Hensley 2, Kellerman), CC 5-22 (Barrett 2, Fields 2, Obermiller).
Rebounding: CHS 29, CC 28
Turnovers: CHS 6, CC 7