With another quality team coming into the Doghouse on Saturday night, the New Albany Bulldogs scarcely had time to hang their heads over Friday’s 69-64 loss at Silver Creek.
So they didn’t. Behind 22 points from Julien Hunter and 18 from Jordan Thomas, New Albany turned in a complete performance while dismantling Evansville Reitz, 84-60.
Led by 6-3 junior guard, a Khristian Lander, a D-I recruit (Louisville Chris Mack watched the game from the Locust Street endzone), the Panthers came out applying maximum defensive pressure. But New Albany’s guard trio of Kaden Stanton, Tucker Biven and Maddox Schmelz methodically worked the ball up-court and created good shots for themselves and their bigs. The Dogs had only seven turnovers on the night.
Stanton hit three three-pointers and scored 17 points. Biven, held scoreless through the first two-and-a-half quarters, finished with 12, while Schmelz scored 5, including a three-pointer that steadied New Albany after Reitz had cut the lead to single digits two minutes into the fourth quarter.
“That was right in front of me, and it felt good,” Shannon said. “He said, ‘I needed that,’ and I said, ‘I know you did.’
“I thought everybody that played, those seven or eight guys, were really good tonight. Everybody contributed. … We were coming off a tough loss last night. It took a lot out of us. All in all, I’m really pleased with the effort. If we can start shooting the ball like that – that’s what we’ve been missing. Last night we were 2 of 15 from 3. You can’t beat anybody, especially the No. 4 team in the state. If we’d made a couple more, who knows?”
Thomas came off the bench after Trey Hourigan picked up his second foul just 2:45 into the game and scored 14 points in the first half. Hourigan had a hard time getting untracked all night and fouled out at the 5:08 mark with 8 points.
Hunter followed Friday’s 16-point effort with another strong scoring night. His worksheet included four dunks — a two-handed put-back in the second period and three straight slams after his teammates threw over the top of the press to create breakaways.
“I told him I thought he’s getting better and better each and every game,” Shannon said. “But I told him, ‘I think you’re at about 75 percent right now.’ I thought he played really well tonight … Around the rim he’s pretty strong. He plays good defense and rebounds well. We have to have him. And Jordan is playing really well too.”
Lander, a lefty, led Reitz with 19 points on 5-of-12 shooting. Owen Dease, a 6-7 junior guard, added 14. Reitz, which recently fell out of the 4A Top 20, fell to 9-5.
“We didn’t have much time to plan for (Reitz) because we had to do all of our work on Silver Creek. Silver Creek is a much different team … with inside guys who can step out. Reitz is guard-oriented, and they don’t have any bigs. We went zone tonight — we just felt like in our man, we weren’t containing (Lander) near enough. He was getting loose on us, they were running some good stuff for him.
“We tried to have two guys around Lander the whole time and someone always on (Dease) —using three people to guard those two. That makes it hard on the other two guys who have to guard three. You’ve gottta pick your poison. That’s what we did again tonight.’”
New Albany (9-6) plays at home twice this weekend —Friday against Evansville North (3-10) and Saturday against Jasper (11-2).
