Menu
Tiger Cubs battle, but suffer bookend loss to Athenians
Greencastle started its first season under new head coach Bryce Rector by losing to Crawfordsville in November, and on Tuesday night the Tiger Cubs closed out the season in the same fashion.
After the teams battled to a 15-15 tie through two quarters, the Athenians showed more scoring punch in the second half and pulled away for a 46-33 win.
They improved to 16-7 with the win, and will meet Tri-West (20-3) in Friday’s first semifinal game. Greencastle ended its season at 8-15.
No one except Rector could have thought the Tiger Cubs could even stay close to the Athenians through two quarters with leading scorer Colin York tallying one free throw, yet they did.
“That says a lot about our team, and them buying into what we want to do defensively,” Rector said. “Walking into this program, one of the things I told the people on the committee was that this team would compete every game on the defensive end. You can have a bad offensive night and still be in the game if you do that.”
The Athenians assigned 6-foot-3 senior Devin Guard to defend York, who entered the game averaging just under 20 points per game, Guard not only had at least a four-inch height advantage, but also had about a 40-pound difference in weight.
“You have to give credit to coach [David] Pierce in this game,” Rector said. “Everything that we got was a hard shot. We didn’t do a good job of taking advantage of them putting so much attention on Colin in the first half.”
The first quarter was played at a slow pace, and the teams combined to hit just 5 of 20 field goal attempts.
Sophomore Gavin Bollman had two of the Tiger Cub baskets in the opening period, while senior Devin Clar fed him with an assist for one of those and scored a layup of his own.
Crawfordsville led 7-6 at the first stop, and got a 3-pointer and an old-fashioned 3-point play from junior Cameron Harris to stay ahead.
The Tiger Cubs got a free throw from J.T. Matthews with 1:25 left in the half and York’s only points came on a free throw with 48 seconds left before intermission to tie the score.
Greencastle came out strongly in the second half, getting a basket and free throw from Bollman, another Clar basket and another Bollman free throw to go up 21-19 with 5:10 left in the third period.
Guard then scored the first nine points of a 14-0 Crawfordsville run that broke the game open for good, getting a basket, then a trey and then a trey plus a free throw after being fouled.
Harris scored another basket with 2:39 left in the third period and added a trey about a minute later for a 33-21 lead.
York fed Matthews for a layup and then added a pair of free throws with 50.5 seconds left to cut the gap to 33-25 at the final stop.
Crawfordsville scored the first six points of the final period — four from Harris — for 39-25 lead that never got below 10.
Harris paced the winners with 17, while Guard added 16 and James Gineris had 10.
Bollman and Clar had eight each for Greencastle. York was limited to six points, his season low and only third game in single digits.
Bollman also had 12 rebounds.
The Tiger Cubs will lose Nick Costin, Clar, Matthews and Rylan Lucas to graduation but have York, Bollman and several other contributors returning.
“I can’t say enough about all of our seniors,” Rector said. “Not only are we going to lose their basketball skills, but their leadership as well. We’re going to have to work to replace both of those things. We have some pieces coming back, and we’re going to have to get in here and work hard this summer to get ready for next year.”
The Tiger Cubs started the season 0-7, but finished 8-8 over the final two-thirds of the season.
“Starting a new program we did a lot of things differently both offensively and defensively,” Rector said. “That was going to take some time to get used to.
“I do think we left some wins out there that we should have had,” he added. “I’m not entirely disappointed with our record. Our kids never gave up, all the way to the end of this game.”
CRAWFORDSVILLE (46) — Harris 6-10 3-4 17, Gineris 3-9 4-6 10, Guard 5-10 3-5 16, Stewart 0-1 0-0 0, Johnson 0-2 1-2 1, Sommer 0-3 2-2 2. Totals 14-33 FG, 13-19 FT, 46 TP
GREENCASTLE (33) — C.York 1-12 3-4 6, N.Costin 1-6 0-0 3, Bollman 3-5 2-4 8, Hutcheson 0-1 0-0 0, Clar 3-5 2-3 8, A.Costin 1-4 0-0 3, Matthews 2-2 1-2 5, A.York 0-1 0-0 0, Wade 0-0 0-0 0, Lucas 0-0 0-0 0, Alexander 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 11-35 FG, 8-13 FT, 33 TP
Crawfordsville 7 8 18 13 — 46
Greencastle 6 9 10 8 — 33
3-point shooting — Crawfordsville 5-13 (Harris 2-5, Guard 3-6, Johnson 0-1, Sommer 0-1), Greencastle 3-12 (York 1-4, N.Costin 1-4, A.Costin 1-3, A.York 0-1).