Lebanon
The result, Lebanon’s 57-45 victory, wasn’t as close as the score indicated. The Raiders led by 29 points after three quarters before coach Kieth Matte unloaded his bench.
Saturday’s game was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but inclement weather forced school administrators to push it to the weekend.
“It’s difficult, but you have to do what you have to do,” Lebanon guard Ryan Milliken said following his team’s second victory within a 24-hour span. “You have to eat right after the game that we had yesterday. We went and ate as a team and just (tried to) get some energy back. It was pretty tiring.”
Lebanon, which was paced by Milliken’s 18 points, improved to 13-1 overall, 10-1 in NHIAA play.
The hosts picked up where they left off on Friday — a 52-46 victory over Manchester West — with five different players scoring in the first quarter. Defensively, Lebanon forced nine first-half turnovers while committing only four.
The Marauders cut Lebanon’s early lead down to 9-7 after Martin Paulsen hit two free throws with less than three minutes remaining in the quarter. Lebanon answered with a 6-0 run — including a Graham Chickering steal and layup, a Noah Didehbani tip-in and a KJ Matte steal and layup — to close out the quarter and never looked back.
Chris Nulty contributed three big blocks in the first half, helping to establish Lebanon’s inside dominance along with Matthew Eylander (12 points).
Milliken, a senior captain with a penchant for playing bigger than his listed height of 5-foot-10, is a sparkplug on defense.
“There are not a lot of kids who can guard like him,” Kieth Matte said. “Sometimes that goes unseen. … Defensively tonight I thought he was tremendous, especially coming off of playing 31 minutes (Friday) night.”
Milliken, who averages about 16 points per game, showed grit on both ends of the floor on Saturday.
“I try to bring a defensive sound if that makes any sense,” Milliken said. “I want to be able to generate my defense to everybody else; we all played great defense. Coach tells me every day, you set the tone.”
Saturday marked the second game back for senior sharpshooter KJ Matte, who missed his team’s first 12 games with a broken foot. The 1,000-point scorer chipped in 11 on Saturday a day after scoring 12.
“The recovery process has been long, but I had to get through it,” KJ Matte said. “Everybody was saying ‘take the time to let it recover, then get back at it.’ I took the time and now I’m back.”
Coach Matte, KJ’s father, said the younger Matte’s minutes are being limited (he played about 12 on Saturday) for the time being. He’s still playing with both a crack in his bone and a brace on his foot.
“Next week, he gets another X-ray and hopefully he’s fully healed,” Coach Matte said. “He broke his fifth metatarsal. It’s a funny bone, it heals slowly since there’s not a lot of blood flow in that area. … We’re being cautious, we’re being careful, we’re trying to keep the big picture in mind. But it was fun to see him play; he was anxious to get back.”
The Marauders were led by Charles Adams (13 points) and Paulsen (11), one day after a home win against Plymouth, 65-45. Chickering and Caleb Putnam added nine points each.
On Saturday they fell to 6-9 overall and 5-7 in NHIAA play, despite outscoring the hosts 19-2 in the fourth quarter.
“They’ve had our number for the past few years,” said Hanover coach Tim Winslow, who also teaches English at Lebanon High. “We gave them a lot of transition baskets because of turnovers and that gives them confidence and that gets us on our heels. And instead of us dictating action, they dictate the tempo and when they dictate the tempo, we struggle to play.”
The Marauders — who converted on nine 2-pointers, nine free throws and six 3-pointers — tend to be a long-range shooting team.
“It’s not my style,” Winslow said. “It’s not what I want to do. But we’re a guard-oriented team. Our bigs are working, they got into the action in the second half tonight and that gave us the opportunity to shoot from the outside.”
Hanover’s 17-year coach downplayed the difficulty of playing games on consecutive days.
“That’s not hard,” he said. “It is what it is. The kids love to play basketball. They would probably like to have more back-to-backs and less practice because we work really hard in practice.”
Both teams play again Tuesday, with Hanover traveling to Goffstown and Lebanon hosting Kingswood.