For the first eight minutes of Friday nights Sagamore Athletic Conference battle between Tri-West and Crawfordsville it just simply wasn’t pretty for the home Athenians. Tri-West scored the games first 17 points of the ball game as Crawfordsville coach Tyler Smith was forced to use two timeouts in the first three and a half minutes. The opening quarter saw CHS trail 23-5 however the second quarter things clicked with the home squad as they out-scored the Bruins 14-11. Despite the strong effort in the second quarter, Tri-West rolled to a 60-33 win over CHS. “Despite losing a lot of seniors from last year that team over there is still Tri-West,” Smith said. “They’re athletic and will always be a challenge. Early on they hit we weren’t doing a good job of defending and they made us pay for it. Later when our defense got better they were still making mostly everything. I loved our energy in that second quarter even from the bench. We seemed connected in everything were doing and that’s the type of quarter we’re hoping and expecting to see for four quarters every night.”
The Bruins overall shot 19-47 from the field (40.4%) with 12 of those 19 made shots coming from three-point range where they shot 12-27 (44&). Tri-West (2-2 2-0 SAC) was led by Lauren Bear who scored 16 in th win. Freshman Aniyah Anthony scored 15, Regan Canada chipped in 12 and Reagan Shaw ended the night with 11. Ava Sullivan rounded out the scoring with six for the Bruins.
“You do what you’re supposed to do and sometimes they just hit the shot,” Smith said. “It really goes both ways with us because we had a lot of good looks right at the basket that we just missed. There were times where we doing everything right on offense but just can’t finish. You want to start to pile up good defensive plays even if the do make, then come down and execute on offense. Those things will eventually go in our favor as the season goes along.”
There was another bright spot for CHS (0-3 0-1 SAC). They ended the night with nine different girls contributing in the scoring column. Riley Gardner led the Athenians with seven while Taylor Abston had six as did Molly Pierce. Elyse Widmer scored five, Olivia Hedrick three, Abby Cox and Celeste Moore both notched two while Addie Hodges and Litzy Huesca rounded out the scoring with a single point.
“We’re going to have to play that way all year,” Smith said of the distributed scoring. “We have to spread the ball around and not be one-dimensional. We’ve shown that we’re fully capable of that. When we start click on that side of the ball that will hopefully raise up the pressure on defense. I think tonight was a learning curve for the girls and it showed them what happens when you fall behind big early. We’ll just take the positives into what will be another big week for us.”
On Tuesday CHS will be back at home for an area showdown with the Fountain Central Mustangs before competing in the Girls Sugar Creek Classic on Friday and Saturday. Friday night CHS will take on county rival Southmont in the second game.
