WINLESS

Whitley County dropped its opening game in the Rafferty’s Caveland Classic Monday night, falling to the unbeaten Cougars of Grayson County, 61-44.
The Colonels (4-3) got off to a slow start, scoring only 12 points in the first half while the Cougars hit the basket for 32 points.
“We didn’t respond to them being a physical team around the basket,” said Whitley County coach Mike Deaton. “We told the kids that they were going to play physical.”
“We didn’t get ourselves mentally ready,” Deaton said. “You have to have a mental approach to the game. When the opening tip goes up, you have to be ready to play. You can’t wait until you are in the second quarter then start playing hard.”
“There’s no excuse for that and hopefully we are not going to have to suffer many more lessons like this where we don’t get ourselves ready to play,” Deaton said. “We didn’t come at them with the same kind of effort that they came at us.”
The Colonels got a spark in the third quarter by freshman Jamie Lebanion, who scored seven straight points to cut a twenty (36-16) point lead to 13 points. Whitley County trailed 40-27 heading into the final frame.
A Zach Powers three pointer sliced the lead to 41-30 early in the final quarter but the Colonels could never get the lead under ten. “We got it down to 11 then we had some nonsensical turnovers were they were not really getting after us that hard. We don’t do the right thing on our end of the court and they go down and get four lay-ups in a row,” said Deaton.
A 9-0 run did push the Cougars lead back out to 18 points before Jordan McCumbers hit a pair of free throws with just under four minutes remaining.
Lebanion led the Colonels with a perfect night from the field with 15 points. Shawn Harris added 11 points.
Editor’s Note: The Colonels lost to Larue County 61-55 and Monroe County 67-65 in tournament play. Zach Powers scored 13 points and Jordan McCumbers added 10 points to lead the Colonels in the loss to the Larue County Hawks.
In the final game, the Colonels rallied to tie the game against Monroe County in the end, but the Eagles hit a last-second shot to get the two-point win.
Jamie Lebanion and McCumbers led the Colonels with 18 points each.

Grayson Co. 61, Whitley Co. 44
Whitley Co. 6 6 15 17- 44
Grayson Co. 17 15 8 21- 61
Whitley Co. (44) – Lowrie 4, Lebanion 15, McCumbers 9, Harris 11, Powers 3, Crawford 2.
Grayson Co. (61) – Mudd 2, W. Smith 13, K. Skaggs 9, Saltsman 4, B. Skaggs 7, Johnston 8, J. Smith 11, Simms 4, Boone 3.