After handing Vianney a 50-47 loss earlier in the week, the Mehlville Senior High School boys’ basketball team suffered a heartbreaking 46-45 loss to Oakville on Friday night at home.
“Oakville has got a good team,” Mehlville head coach Andy Guethle told the Call. “We struggled on defensive rebounding and they got a lot of second shots.”
The Panthers (3-2, 0-1 Suburban West) jumped out to an 11-10 lead after the first quarter against Oakville and kept their one-point lead (25-24) going into halftime. The Tigers came back in the second half with 22 points and the one-point victory.
Besides the loss, the most notable statistic that separated the two teams was the fact that Oakville outrebounded Mehlville 34-18.
“This was a tough loss for us,” Guethle said. “We didn’t do nearly as good of a job defensively on rebounding as we should have.”
Malcolm Crawford led the Panthers with 17 points and one rebound. The senior guard racked up 15 of his 17 points from three-point range in the loss to the Tigers.
“Malcolm’s a good shooter and played a pretty solid game,” Guethle said. “He had gotten a lot of looks from the three and them early on. He’s doing a nice job for us.”
Panthers David Williams and Aaron Alexander tied for the team lead in rebounds with five boards each. Williams also scored nine points and recorded one steal.
“We’re going to need David to play well for us in order to win,” Guethle said. “He had gotten into early foul trouble and was in foul trouble for most of the game. He’s a good player that should be able to get a double-double in every game.”
The Panthers are back in action Friday evening when they travel to Kirkwood for a Suburban West Conference showdown with the Pioneers.
Kirkwood (1-2) is coming off a 50-37 loss to Lindbergh last Saturday evening. Ronald Patton led the Pioneers with 13 points and nine rebounds.
“Kirkwood’s got a real nice team,” Guethle said. “They’re big with some nice guards, so we’ll have to execute and make them guard us. We can’t let their pressure defense get to us and make us take rushed shots.”
The Panthers’ road game at Kirkwood is slated for a 7 p.m. start.
