Basketball Recap: Castle Comes Up Short

It's hard to turn regular season success into postseason wins, a fact Castle can now relate to. They took a 66-56 hit to the loss column at the hands of the Evansville Reitz Panthers on Friday. While losing is never fun, the Knights can't take it too hard given the team's big disadvantage in MaxPreps' Indiana basketball rankings (they are ranked 90th, while the Panthers are ranked 32nd).

Xander Niehaus

Points

03/07/25 vs Evansville Reitz	21
02/28/25 vs Jeffersonville	16
02/26/25 @ Vincennes Lincoln	18

Loss or not, Castle got some senior leadership from Xander Niehaus and Jakob Wongler. Niehaus shot 54% from the field to rack up 21 points and four steals, while Wongler went 5-for-10 en route to 14 points and three steals. Niehaus' big performance that evening made it three games in a row in which he has scored at least 16 points. The team also got some help courtesy of Tim Swope, who posted nine points.

Evansville Reitz found their leader in sophomore Jaylan Mitchell, who dropped a double-double with 22 points and 13 boards. Mitchell has been hot recently, having posted ten or more rebounds the last three times he's played. Jayce Swanson was another key player, going 6-for-9 on his way to 18 points.

This is the second loss in a row for Castle and nudges their season record down to 13-12. As for Evansville Reitz, their win bumped their record up to 16-5.

Castle does not have any more games scheduled as of now. As for Evansville Reitz, they wasted no time getting back out on the court and have already played their next contest, a 68-61 defeat against Evansville Harrison on the 8th.