By Will Willems/The Lebanon Reporter
Lebanon — With just more the six minutes remaining, everything seemed perfect for the Lebanon Tigers girls’ basketball team.
They were forcing turnovers, making key baskets and controlling the tempo against conference rival Crawfordsville.
But the final six minutes were a different story as the Class 3A No. 9 Athenians closed the game on a 20-4 run to defeat Lebanon 50-38 Friday night at Rosenstihl Gymnasium.
“I think they did a great job in their 1-3-1 of knowing where Ali (Curtis) and Katie (Curtis) were at all times,” Lebanon Head Coach Dave Ferrell said when asked about the difference in the final six minutes. “We did a poor job of executing some of the things we needed to. Small things like shot faking and screening and we started to stand around a bit. Credit to Crawfordsville they are a good team, a veteran team and they forced us out of what we wanted to do.”
Lebanon stormed out of the gate taking a 7-0 lead on baskets from three players. Crawfordsville scored four in a row to make it 7-4, but baskets by Brittany Branstetter and Lexi Reese made it 11-4 at the end of the first.
Then Lebanon went cold. Crawfordsville went on a 8-0 run to take its first lead of the game at 12-11, but Sarah Spoylar hit two free throws and made a jumper to make the score 15-12.
Spoylar’s basket was the only make of the second quarter and the Tigers shot 19.4 percent for the first half.
Still, Lebanon led 15-14 at the half. The Tigers came out firing again at the start of the third quarter, scoring the first four points to take a five-point lead.
Ferrell said starting the halves off strong was a point of emphasis for the Tigers.
“We have had slow starts the last couple of games so the message was go out there and play fearlessly and play determined,” Ferrell said. “And I thought we did that in both the first and third quarter, unfortunately we didn’t carry that into the second and third quarters. And we need to improve on that.”
Lebanon led 24-18 after a basket by Kalyn Harker but Crawfordsville closed the quarter on a 10-2 run to lead going into the fourth quarter.
The Tigers turned up the defense at the beginning of the fourth quarter, going on a 6-0 run (on 3-pointers from Ali and Katie Curtis) to take a 34-30 lead with 6:20 to play.
Crawfordsville then held Lebanon scoreless for the next four minutes, and controlled the rest of the game.
Lebanon forced 22 turnovers in the game, but couldn’t get the stops or baskets they needed too down the stretch.
