The Crawfordsville Athenians closed out their regular season Friday night against a red-hot Park Tudor team. The visitors entered with an eight-game winning streak and made it nine by defeating Crawfordsville 64-61.
After being tied at 27 at the half the Panthers dominated the third quarter, out-scoring the Athenians 25-14 to take a 52-41 lead into the final quarter. The lead grew to as many as 15 for the Panthers before the Athenians came storming back. Crawfordsville cut the lead to three and had the ball for the final possession, but a last second 3-pointer fell short.
Crawfordsville’s 14 turnovers led to transition baskets for Park Tudor. Athenian senior Ty Lynas did his best to get his team back in the game as he led all scorers with 28 points in the loss.
“I think Park Tudor picked up their intensity on defense and that gave us problems tonight,” Crawfordsville coach David Pierce said. “I give credit to our guys, they kept fighting all night and didn’t quit. We did a good job of continuing to attack the basket and were able to shoot our free-throws well. Late in the game we did have a few mishaps in the huddle because we weren’t paying attention during the timeout. That can’t happen if we want to be successful. We have to be better on staying focused and that’s a little frustrating especially with this group.”
Crawfordsville (12-6 6-1 SAC) with the loss has lost three out of their last four games. Every team wants to be playing their best basketball at this point in the season, but despite the losses Pierce says that he and his team have learned a lot during this four game stretch.
“We’ve learned things both good and bad,” he said. “We’ve learned that some of guys are coachable during a timeout and which ones aren’t. Because of that we learned some key things that we’ll have to use come tournament time. Guys like Ziair (Morgan) have gained trust from us over this stretch and you can see his confidence is starting to rise. There’s so many things that we’ve learned over this stretch that we can back and watch film on to get better.”
Along with Lynas’s 28 points, Hall joined him in double-figures with 14. The Panthers (11-6) had three in double-figures led by Ronald Johnson’s 22. Malachi Archey recorded 17 and JC Glenn added in 14. Park Tudor made nine 3-pointers compared to just five for the Athenians.
On the night the Athenians also celebrated their five seniors. Manager Andrew Martin, Trey McLemore, and Nate Schroeter were honored before the game along with Hall and Lynas. This senior group for the Athenians has went 54-37 combined in their four seasons together. Jesse Hall became a member of the elusive 1,000 point-club and they are looking for one more postseason run together.
“They’re such a special group of kids and they’ve meant so much to our program,” Pierce said. “Them and their families have dedicated so much time and have paid the cost to be successful. We’ll talk about his group for a long time because we’ve been so fortunate to have each and every one of them.”
The Athenians will have a few days of rest before they travel to Frankfort to open up the Class 3A sectional 25 on Wednesday. Crawfordsville will duel once again with Danville who defeated the Athenians back on Feb. 19 84-73 for the Sagmore Conference title.
