LEBANON — Pass and move. Pass and move. Basketball can be so simple sometimes.
The Lebanon High boys basketball team completed a perfect regular season and captured the Wechsler Cup with one half of concerted pass-and-move play on Friday night. It led to a 33-point second half and erased an eight-point deficit at the break for a 51-39 win over Hanover at Lang Metcalf Gym.
Lebanon (11-0) found itself stymied in the opening two quarters, slowed by poor shooting (7-for-20) and solid defense by the Marauders (7-4). The Raiders found their game once they started passing the ball around the Hanover defense and moving their feet at both ends of the floor.
“I think there’s more to it than that,” said Lebanon junior guard Braeden Falazarano, who matched his season and career best with 20 points. “We didn’t play that well on defense or offense, for that matter. It’s just focus and intensity in the second half. We came out, played a lot harder and, y’know, it showed.”
Karsten Hansen added 13 points for Lebanon, which hit eight 3-pointers on the night, five in the second half as the Raiders gradually found their range. Brett Simmons paced Hanover with 11 points.
Marauder coach Tim Winslow took some lessons learned from Tuesday’s 43-40 loss to Lebanon at Hanover High and applied them with success through the first two periods of Friday’s rematch. The Marauders kept a grip on the game until Falzarano hit a fadeway one-hander just before the third-quarter buzzer for a 34-32 lead upon which the Raiders would build the rest of the way.
“What happened in the first half was our defense was really strong, and it continued to be strong,” Winslow said. “We’re really good for 7-10 seconds, but we were really strong from basically 7-18 seconds, and that’s something we worked on from the other night. They did a really nice job, and they made Lebanon work hard for every basket.”
Hanover is still maturing as an offensive unit, no longer the chuck-and-duck squad of the past two years that could put up 70 or 80 points at the drop of a hat. The Marauders must limit opponent possessions and stretch them out to find success, a recipe that worked through the first half.
Will Cahoon’s play on the glass helped set Hanover’s early tone. The 6-foot-3 senior center snagged five first-quarter rebounds — four on the offensive end — and converted a pair of putbacks as the Marauders scored seven of the game’s first nine points.
The arrival of junior forward Nyeoti Punni in the second period gave Lebanon a means of nullifying Hanover on the boards, but the Raiders’ offense didn’t follow along. Instead, Marauder guards Mason Gantrish, Max Galbraith and Jacob Kubik-Pauw joined Simmons in a perimeter weave that ultimately broke Lebanon’s interior defense down, led to easy baskets and created a 26-18 lead at the half for the visitors.
“We talked at half about doing the things we practice all the time; those were the things we didn’t do in the first half,” Lebanon coach Kieth Matte said. “We don’t worry when they make tough shots. We worry about the things we can control, when we don’t get back, when we don’t help on the ball, when we don’t rebound it. We really talked about the things we can control versus the things we can’t control.
“In the second half, we shot the ball a little better but, more importantly, we guarded. That we can control.”
After shooting relatively well in the first half (11-for-24), Hanover found the going tougher in the second. The Marauders scored just six third-quarter points, opening the door for Lebanon to take over.
The Raiders hit five of their first eight shots of the third stanza, four of them 3-pointers. The last, out of the hands of senior Calvin Bates, gave Lebanon a 32-30 lead, its first since mid-second quarter and just its second of the night. Cahoon (six points, nine rebounds) sank a putback to tie the game at 32, and Falzarano answered to give Lebanon the lead for good.
The basket kicked off a 15-2 Lebanon run over the next five minutes, all built on passing and moving.
“In the first half, we were playing a little too slow,” Falzarano said. “We wanted to speed up a little bit, play faster, and I think we did a good job of that in the second half.”
Free Throws: Lebanon has been allowing two parents per Raider athlete for about two weeks at Metcalf Gym. The junior varsity crew sits on one set of bleachers while the other set is disinfected; the situation gets reversed for varsity parents between games. … Jackson Stone contributed six points for Lebanon on a pair of 3-pointers. Kubik-Pauw, Gantrish, Galbraith and Kevin Pillsbury all added five points for Hanover. … Both teams begin NHIAA Division II tournament play on Thursday. Lebanon will host either Con-Val (1-2) or John Stark (3-7), while Hanover gets a stiff test at home against Bow (13-1).
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.