CARLISLE — The host Carlisle Indians (2-6) put together a couple of scoring runs to take their first lead in Monday’s game with Franklin.
Then they got run over.
Trailing 33-26 at the break, a fired-up Wildcats team went on a 16-2 third-quarter tear and took the lead for good in an eventual 68-60 win.
Justin and Jacob Rossi, Franklin’s 6-foot-8 twin towers, both turned in double-double performances.
Jacob scored 11 points and snared a dozen rebounds, while his twin brother Justin added a game-high 24 points while hauling down 14 boards.
The Wildcats are now 5-1 this season.
“Carlisle’s beat us in football, they’ve beat us in wrestling, we weren’t going to let them beat us in basketball,” Jacob Rossi said. “We were just tired of losing to Carlisle. We wanted to come out and wax them early.”
The game was moved up one day because of tonight’s Ohio State football game.
Even with that 16-point run, which saw Franklin’s Travis Lakins drain a trio of 3-pointers, Carlisle kept a never-say-die attitude which nearly earned it the lead again. Jacobs hit a 3-pointer with 5:01 left in the game that tied the score at 55-all, but Franklin came up with its final run of the game and outscored Carlisle 13-5 the rest of the way.
“It was a game of runs,” Carlisle coach Jeff Waugh said. “They made one early, then we came up with a couple in the second quarter ... then they had theirs in the third. We just couldn’t come up with enough of another run to get back ahead.
“I’m very proud of our effort. We’ve lost three close games in a row, but I feel if we continue to bring that kind of effort to practice, that we’ll continue to get better as a team. If we keep doing that, we’ll always have a chance to win.”
Carlisle, which plays Madison on Friday, has lost its last four games by 10 points or less. Including Monday’s contest, the Indians have lost the last three by a combined total of 13 points.
Franklin coach Brian Bales said his team’s comeback was more about making the right adjustments at halftime than him giving any sort of Knute Rockne speech.
“I thought Carlisle had a nice game plan,” Bales said. “They were double- and triple-teaming our big kids in the first half, so we made some little adjustments at halftime.
“Our kids responded in the second half, and I thought Travis (Lakins) and Tyler Budde came through with some big shots for us. That really helped to get us going.”
Lakins scored 20 points with 15 of that from behind the 3-point arc. Budde scored all eight of his points in the second half.
Jordan Jacobs led Carlisle with 18 points, fellow guard Adam Emrick finished with 17 and guard Josh Koogle finished with 10.
Bales was glad to see his team’s effort after an embarrassing 37-point loss to Bellbrook before Christmas break.
“We had 17 days off since that game, and so I think we might’ve been a little sluggish in that first half,” Bales said. His Wildcats host Valley View on Friday.
“It was nice to see the kids respond like they did. That game’s behind us now.”