Lincoln boys basketball coach Neil Alexander is on the path to 1,000 victories, and he got one step closer Friday at Lanphier.
The first half of Lanphier’s boys basketball season may be filled with exasperation, but the Lions gave Lincoln everything the Railsplitters wanted.
Lincoln (14-3 overall, 5-1 in the Central State Eight Conference) pulled out a 35-31 win over Lanphier on Friday at Lober-Nika Gymnasium.
Lincoln coach Neil Alexander, who is approaching win No. 1,000 in his career, said there is no mystery why Lanphier gave Lincoln a tough, down-to-the-wire game.
“It always is when Lanphier and Lincoln play,” Alexander said after picking up his 992nd career win. “It’s been a rivalry long before I was at Lincoln, and I’ve been there 35 years, so long before me and it always will be.
“It’s fun. Both teams are very competitive, both teams play very good defense, and when you’ve got that, you’ve got the scoreboard reading what it does.”
Lanphier coach Blake Turner, himself a veteran of the game in his 14th season as the Lions’ head coach, doesn’t do moral victories. Lanphier, he says, should expect to win these types of games.
“We’re not a disciplined team, we don’t play with that sense of urgency that Lanphier basketball fans are accustomed to, and it’s just frustrating at this point,” Turner said. “You want to try to grind them out.
“We’re not into moral victories or (just) playing hard or playing teams close isn’t good enough and it’s not the standard for our program,” Turner said.
Karson Komnick led Lincoln with 16 points while teammate Tate Aue had nine points, including one clutch 3-pointer from the volleyball line that gave Lincoln a 29-26 lead with 6 minutes, 22 seconds left. It was the first lead change since Lanphier’s Kaimen Smith put the Lions ahead 24-22 late in the third when he connected on a 3-pointer. After Aue made the shot, he let his Lanphier defender know.
Almost a minute later, Smith hit his third 3 and gave the nearest Lincoln player a verbal retort to the earlier exchange of words.
This time, the officials called a technical foul, and Lincoln took advantage of that to snap the 29-29 tie with four quick points from Komnick — two technical free throws and a layup off a backdoor cut — with 5 minutes, 15 seconds remaining.
“We got more aggressive to the basket, we made things, and then we had the offensive rebound to tie it by (Komnick, tied it 24-24 15 seconds into the final period),” Alexander said. “Luckily we came out on top.”
Demond Porter hit a transition layup with 45 seconds to get the Lions (5-11, 3-3 CS8) within 33-31. Brody Tungate split a pair of free throws and Camarie Richmond’s attempt at a game-tying 3 missed, went out of bounds with 6.0 seconds left. Komnick split his pair of free throws for the final tally and prevented a 3 from forcing overtime.
Komnick said the Railers drew some motivation from the technical foul.
“The two free throws helped us and after that, we just rolled and got the lead,” Komnick said, “(before Lanphier) came back a little bit.”
Lanphier held Lincoln to just two points in the third quarter as the Lions were able to regain the lead they lost early in the game. Richmond drained a floater to get Lanphier within 22-19, then had a pull-up jumper in transition on his next time down the floor.
With 2:37 left, Soriano Hayes was called for a charge about two minutes after Lanphier’s Anthony Peck tried to take a charge, but the officials sent Komnick to the free-throw line where he made the Railers’ lone points of the period. Turner was not happy with the Peck foul, but was especially perturbed with the one which went against Hayes.
“I just we did a good job defensively, (but) I still wasn’t happy with the way we were running our offense; just undisciplined on offense, not getting the shots that we should get, not attacking the zone the way we wanted to attack. I thought we were too complacent and too laid back against it.”
Smith, however, made his 3 with 1:10 left in the quarter as Lanphier finished the quarter outscoring Lincoln 9-2. The fourth began with Komnick getting an offensive rebound and the putback before Hayes attacked the Lincoln defense and got to the rim just 11 seconds later. Bryce Vlahovich erased Lanphier’s last lead with a tough basket before Aue’s 3.
The City Tournament begins on Wednesday, Jan. 21, and Turner expects the prospect of a three-peat to help the team clean up some areas of its game.
“We’re close, but close doesn’t get you anything in this game,” Turner said. “We’re back-to-back city champions, we’re going for a three-peat, something that hasn’t been done in a long time (Southeast was the last team to win three in a row outright from 1989-91).
“Maybe that will give them the edge. With this team and being young and the lack of experience, I never know what to expect. Sometimes we play state championship basketball, sometimes we look like a freshman basketball team — sometimes in the same game — and you get everything in between.”
Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, [email protected], Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Boys basketball: Old rivals clash as Lincoln tops Lanphier
Category: General Sports
