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12:52 AM Sunday, January 15, 2012

By Scott Hayes

Staff Writer

TRENTON — With two starters out due to injury Saturday night, the Edgewood Cougars just couldn’t keep up with visiting Lebanon.

The Warriors (2-9) rolled to a 60-26 win over the winless Cougars (0-9), snapping an eight-game losing streak and putting a mark in the victory column for the first time in over a month.

“It’s taken ten games, but we finally decided to play well for a full four quarters,” Lebanon coach Matt Higgins said. “We’re hoping this will be a jump start to a pretty important week for us.

“Edgewood played really hard out there tonight, we just had better athletes. Our players did a great job of finding each other and making the extra pass to get better shots and get everyone involved.”

Eleven different Warriors scored, led by Ben Esposito who finished with a game-high 18 points. Zach Beckner added 12 and Luke Morgan had nine to go with eight rebounds. Morgan’s night was highlighted by an alley-oop dunk from Beckner for the game’s first points.

“We put it in practice this week and coach said the first time they were in a 2-3 zone we were going to run it. It just happened that they opened the game in the zone,” Morgan said. “Zack threw a perfect pass like he had every time in practice. I was pumped.

“Coach told us to treat the last 10 games of the season like it’s a new season, so it’s nice to start with a win. We were pretty confident coming in that we could do what we wanted to do in the paint because they were missing their big guy.”

Edgewood played without 6-foot-4 center Cody Hall and point guard Mason Back. The Cougars struggled to find offense without them, particularly in the fourth quarter when Lebanon held Edgewood without a field goal and limited them to three points.

The Cougars’ 26-point total was their lowest output of the season.

Edgewood shot just 22.5 percent from the field (9-of-40) and turned it over 20 times.

A.J. Pieratt was Edgewood’s leading scorer with eight points.

“It makes it a little more of a challenge to be without Cody and Mason, but not having them is no reason to not be able to compete,” Edgewood coach Aaron Horne said. “We’re not going to use that as an excuse by any means.

“Poor shooting has been an Achilles’ heel for us the entire season,” Horne added. “We’ve got to do a better job of executing, on the offensive end especially.”

The Warriors made 50 percent of their shots on the night (24-of-48) and were dominant on the boards, grabbing 36 rebounds to Edgewood’s 21.

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