Injury, late turnovers doom Crusaders

The Saxony Lutheran Crusaders (4-1) suffered their first loss of the year at the hands of Farmington 54-46 on Friday at Saxony Lutheran High School. The eight-point margin does not show how close the game was, the Crusaders were forced to foul at the end in an attempt to tie.

In a very physical game, the Crusaders held a lead at the end of the first quarter before the Knights started the 2nd on a 7-0 run. Saxony used a timeout and whatever head coach Justin Callahan said worked as the Crusaders closed on a 11-2 run to lead at halftime 22-19. The highlight of the Saxony run was a rim-rattling slam by senior John Hartmann.

Callahan said this game went exactly as he thought it would.

“Real hard-nosed game, I knew they[Farmington]were really good coming in, they could have easily won the tournament they played it last week,” Callahan said. “They have a lot of young kids who are very skilled athletically so I think we did pretty well, we were right there in it.”

On the first play of the third quarter, Saxony junior Wesley Kiehne took a charge but also took a nasty hit to the head off the floor, subsequently missing the rest of the game. This would be the only stoppage of the quarter as not one timeout or shooting foul was called the rest of the third and Farmington took a one-point 35-34 lead into the fourth.

The final frame started as a back-and-forth affair with each team trading the lead a few times. The game began to slip away from the Crusaders at about the two-minute mark with a couple of costly turnovers. The team was forced to foul and Farmington was able to go 5-6 on their free throws, cementing the win for the Knights. Callahan said his team was just a few plays away from a better result.

“Wes being hurt just kind of took us out of a rhythm and weren't able to get back into it. At times I’m just thinking about ‘what are we doing?’ it was almost like we intended to give the ball to Farmington. Did we go colorblind there for a few minutes or what?” Callahan said. “Just those little plays over the course of 32 minutes when you're playing a team like that that you can't do. Our kids were trying very hard, but just some things down the stretch that you have to do to win.”

Saxony Lutheran will travel to North County to take on the Raiders on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.