Lake City soars again

COEUR d’ALENE — After their second hard-fought victory in 3 1/2 weeks over their city rivals, the Lake City Timberwolves are sitting pretty atop the 5A Inland Empire League boys basketball race at the midway point of their league schedule.

Junior Kyle Guice totaled 16 points, nine rebounds and three blocked shots, and junior J.J. Winger hit a huge 3-pointer in the final minutes as Lake City, ranked fifth in the state 5A media poll, scratched past the visiting Coeur d’Alene Vikings 50-47 on Friday night in the boys Fight for the Fish spirit game.

“That’s huge ... we’ve put ourselves in a good position, no doubt about it,” said Lake City coach Jim Winger, whose Timberwolves (10-3, 3-0 5A IEL) have two games left with Post Falls and a trip to Lewiston remaining in league play. “But I don’t think anything is going to be real easy.”

Coeur d’Alene, which lost the first meeting with Lake City 44-40, dropped to 8-4, 1-2.

In the girls game, second-ranked Coeur d’Alene (14-3, 3-1 5A IEL) pulled away in the third quarter en route to a 43-33 victory over much-improved Lake City (9-7, 0-4). Cd’A won the first meeting by 32 points.

Lake City won the spirit competition between the two schools for the third straight year, and 10th time overall.

A capacity crowd estimated at 2,700 at Lake City watched the 15th annual edition of the spirit competition/basketball game(s).

Lake City’s boys and girls travel to Kalispell, Mont., today for makeup games with Glacier High.

Coeur d’Alene’s boys play host to Lakeland on Tuesday; Coeur d’Alene’s girls return to action next Friday at home vs. Lewiston.

Lake City 50, Coeur d’Alene 47: Lake City played mostly zone against Coeur d’Alene in the first meeting, but opened in man-to-man in the Fish game. The result was a little faster pace and an exchange of runs.

Lake City went up 6-2, then Coeur d’Alene spurted ahead 13-10. Lake City closed the first half with a 13-3 run over the final 6 minutes to lead 23-16 at halftime.

The T-Wolves switched to zone to open the third quarter, but as quickly as Devin Kluss sank a 3-pointer and teammate Colby Daniels made two more 3s for Coeur d’Alene, the game was tied at 27 and Lake City was back in man.

“I think our best defense is man to man,” Winger said. “In the Fish game I didn’t want us to go out and stand around, and not get after it. I think we’ve played our best games opening in man. We went to the zone at the start of the second half because we were in foul trouble, and we thought we could get 6 minutes out of it, but they shot it real well from outside and we had to get out of it in a hurry.”

The Vikings went up 29-26 on a hook shot by Tony Naccarato midway through the third quarter. But Lake City answered with a 7-0 run, capped by 3-pointers by Drew Hocking and Riley Moreen, and the T-Wolves were never headed.

Coeur d’Alene pulled within 47-45 on a hook shot by Kelton Hunter with 1:40 left — the Vikings’ first points in more than 3 minutes. But J.J. Winger knocked down a 3-pointer from the left wing with 1:09 remaining to boost Lake City’s lead to 5. Naccarato hit a basket and was fouled with 48.9 seconds left to trim it to 3. But he missed the free throw, and neither team scored over the frenetic final seconds.

The T-Wolves missed a free throw with 5.3 seconds left, and Daniels’ 35-footer bounced off the rim at the buzzer.

“We rebounded pretty well,” Guice said. “And we stepped it up in the fourth quarter. We had some critical turnovers that hurt us, and we can’t have those if we want to go deep into state.”

Lake City had 12 turnovers, some of those referred to by Winger as “Fish turnovers.”

Coeur d’Alene coach Kent Leiss pointed at his team’s 17 turnovers — 10 in the first half — the inability to block out Guice at key times, and allowing a few too many 3s by Lake City as the keys to the Viking loss.

“Once we stopped turning the ball over ....” Leiss said. “I thought the game was a game of runs — we’d play 2 or 3 minutes where I thought we looked really good, and we’d play a couple of minutes where we didn’t look very good. I thought not blocking out Guice a few times was murder.

“I thought Kyle Guice was the best player on the floor tonight. He hurt us with two or three offensive rebound baskets that really spelled trouble for us.”

Moreen added 11 points for Lake City, and Tucker Louie-McGee added seven points off the bench and made some key plays as fouls mounted on some of Lake City’s starters.

“I thought a big boost to us was Tucker,” Jim Winger said. “I thought he came in and handled the ball well, made some good penetrations. When you’re playing your rival, in the circus of the Fish, you’ve just got to grind one out ... just figure a way to get out of there with a ‘W.’”

Daniels led Coeur d’Alene with 14 points, 11 in the second half. Naccarato added 10 points.

Coeur d’Alene 7 9 20 11 — 47

Lake City 10 13 16 11 — 50

COEUR d’ALENE — Paulsen 3, Walde 2, Tripp 0, Daniels 14, Carpenter 4, Naccarato 10, Moore 2, Hancock 0, Kluss 6, Hunter 6.

LAKE CITY — Adams 0, Pratt 5, Hocking 3, Guice 16, Louie-McGee 7, Moreen 11, Dahl 0, Winger 8.

Coeur d’Alene 43, Lake City 33: The Timberwolves looked much improved from the first meeting, a 49-17 loss at Coeur d’Alene on Dec. 18. Lake City played zone and dared Coeur d’Alene to shoot from the outside, and the Vikings made just 3 of 23 3-pointers.

Lake City led 15-10 midway through the second quarter when Coeur d’Alene went to a full-court press. Caelyn Orlandi stole the ball and hit a 3-pointer for the Vikings, starting an 11-3 run which led to a 21-20 halftime lead for the Viks.

A 3-point basket by Madison Sumner and a 3-point play by Kendalyn Brainard to close the third quarter helped Coeur d’Alene open up a 35-24 lead, and Lake City came no closer than six points in the fourth quarter.

“He had a great game plan, for the talent he has and the length he’s had the program,” Coeur d’Alene coach Dale Poffenroth said. “It was a very well thought-out game plan, and his kids executed it the way they were supposed to. We, as coaches, didn’t make a lot of changes from the bench — in this game, those changes don’t get made very well (because of the noise). And you think you told them what to do, and they didn’t quite hear it right, and it doesn’t always work too well. But I couldn’t be any prouder of what they did in the third quarter. I thought they played really excellent basketball in the third quarter ... we played our style of basketball.”

Orlandi scored 11 of her game-high 16 points in the first half for Coeur d’Alene, which was playing without junior guard Sydni Parker, who suffered a knee injury Tuesday vs. Post Falls but may return by the end of next week. Brainard finished with nine points and Brittany Tackett, who started in place of Parker, had six points, five rebounds and four steals.

Amber Hawkes had 12 points and seven rebounds for Lake City, and Madi Farrell was a big factor inside defensively, finishing with nine points, 13 rebounds and five blocked shots. Kassie Torres had eight boards.

Lake City finished with 25 turnovers, nine of those coming in the second quarter.

“Our youth gets to us sometimes,” Lake City coach Bryan Kelly said. “We get down to crunch time, and we revert to our old ways and turn the ball over. But we’re a couple baskets from being right there. So I’m just proud of our effort; we keep getting better every game. Amber Hawkes has just played outstanding for us the last couple of games.”

Coeur d’Alene 6 15 14 8 — 43

Lake City 5 15 4 9 — 33

COEUR d’ALENE — Sumner 6, Chalich 0, Orlandi 16, Tackett 6, Brainard 9, Wellsandt 2, Williams 4.

LAKE CITY — Jackson 4, D. Wilson 5, Gewecke 0, Wheelock 1, Farrell 9, Torres 2, Hawkes 12.