By Will Willems/The Lebanon Reporter
Lebanon — It wasn’t a flawless 32 minutes of basketball for the Lebanon Tigers boys’ basketball team Friday night at Rosenstihl Gymnasium, but it was good enough.
The Tigers defeated Crawfordsville 62-56 behind dominating post play from Alex Prittie and the emergence of freshman Caleb Brannon.
“The first half was as good as I have seen us play since I have been here,” Lebanon Head Coach Tom Johnson said. “What I liked was we shared the ball. Last week (against Hamilton Heights) I thought we forced a lot. Today we got everyone involved. I like the way we ran the floor and I liked the way we finished. It was a great half of basketball.”
The Tigers jumped out to a 12-4 lead, getting baskets from all five starters. After Crawfordsville closed to 15-10, Lebanon went on a 10-2 run into the second quarter.
During the run, the Tigers got a boost from their bench, with Alex Zobrist scoring four points and Brannon chipping in a bucket. Brannon was just getting started.
Leading 32-19, Brannon scored seven of the next nine points, extending the Tigers lead to 18. The lead reached 20 at the half when Prittie’s tip-in beat the half-time buzzer.
For the game, Brannon scored 17 points on 7-of-9 shooting.
“Caleb is a great scorer,” Johnson said. “He can shoot the ball, he can get to the basket and he has a good pull-up game. What Caleb has really worked hard at as a freshman, because in eighth grade he was so much better than everyone and worked mainly on the ball, is his work off the ball. The sky’s the limit for him.”
Crawfordsville got within 13 points in the fourth quarter, but back-to-back baskets by Prittie pushed the lead back to 17 points.
The senior center scored a team-high 19 points and pulled down a career-high 20 rebounds.
“Alex Prittie had a huge night,” Johnson said. “The first time I have had a player grab 20 rebounds. He was great on the boards down the stretch. He came this off-season with a real desire to get better with his back to the basket. I have so many good things to say about the kid. He didn’t like contact his first three years here. He came in about three days a week this summer and we just hammered him with contact. We did a lot of offensive rebounding drills, a lot of catching off dribble penetration and a lot of work with his back to the basket. I couldn’t be happier for a kid because he worked really hard.”
Crawfordsville inched within seven in the final minute because of some sloppy play by the Tigers.
A 3-pointer at the buzzer by the Athenians Trent Crabtree (game-high 26 points) made the final margin six. The Tigers shot only 46.2 percent (6-of-13) from the free-throw line in the second half and Lebanon had a majority of its 21 turnovers in that stretch.
