Coming off a strong defensive performance in their season opening win over Greencastle on Tuesday, Crawfordsville faced a much tougher test Saturday night as they welcomed Benton Central. Crawfordsville coach David Pierce knew his defense, which allowed just 32 points to Greencastle, would be put to the test and that’s what the Bison did against the Athenians as their high-powered offense led the visitors to a 76-68 win over the Athenians.
Dawson Brock for the Bison drilled a shot from beyond half court as time expired in the opening quarter to give the Bison a 14-13 advantage. It was then the Athenians who responded with a high offensive quarter scoring 19 points in the second to take a 32-29 lead into the locker room. However in the third quarter the Bison came out on fire from three as Ryan Foster and Jesse Stout led the Bison to score 26 points in the third. The Athenians battled for much of the final quarter and trailed by just three points with 2:47 left in the game, but couldn’t break through as the Bison held on.
“I tried to explain to our guys that we still played very well,” Crawfordsville coach David Pierce said. “We saw many good things in game two of the season that our encouraging. Sometimes you just run into buzz-saw’s like Benton Central, and we did tonight. They just got hot and continued to make shots.”
Ian Hensley led the Athenians and all scorers in the game with 25 points in the loss. Alex Kellerman made his season debut for Crawfordsville and scored 15 points and Alex Hernandez rounded out the double-figure scoring for CHS with 13.
Benton Central shot 57 percent from the field in the win and 46 percent from three. Blake Buchanan led the Bison with 21 points. Foster connected on 6-8 threes to end with 18 while Stout went a perfect 3-3 from behind the arc and finished with 13. Brock ended the night with ten for the Bison.
“Ian had a good game scoring for us and picking up some steals,” Pierce said. “He’s got a do a bit better job of taking care of the ball though. We loved having AK (Alex Kellerman) back. Just to see him back out on the court was fun. Both Mekhi and Alex Hernandez did a good job of rebounding and shooting it well from the field. We’re super excited about how our offense has progressed here early in the season. We scored 68 points with missing a lot of shots in the fourth. We felt like we had a ton of weapons at our disposal on that side of the court tonight.”
Crawfordsville (1-1) will hit the road for two games next week. The first is their Sagamore Conference opener in a girl/boy double-header against Lebanon. Then Saturday night it’ll be another girl/boy double-header as the Athenians travel to Attica.
