Moscow too much for Lakeland
LOREN BENOIT/Press Lakeland High’s Dylan Knight drives to the basket through the Moscow defense in Game 1 of the 4A Region 1 championship series Wednesday night at North Idaho College.
COEUR d’ALENE — Not even a fire-alarm delay of some 25 minutes could cool off the Moscow Bears on Wednesday night.
The top-seeded Bears took it to second-seeded Lakeland both early and late in a 66-47 victory over the Hawks in the first game of the best-of-3 4A Region 1 championship series Wednesday night at North Idaho College’s Rolly Williams Court.
“We couldn’t guard their stuff. We couldn’t do our stuff offensively,” Lakeland coach Dave Stockwell said. “They knew us better than we did.”
Top-seeded Moscow (9-13) will play host to Lakeland (13-8) on Friday at 6 p.m. at Bear Den in Game 2, with Lakeland needing a win to force a deciding game in Moscow on Saturday.
Gabe Quinnett scored a game-high 22 points for Moscow, which led by as much as 27 points in beating Lakeland for the third time in three tries this season, all by double digits.
“The guys love playing Lakeland; we play our best basketball against Lakeland,” third-year Moscow coach Josh Uhrig said. “All the talk the last couple of years has been Lakeland; we want to show we’re here to.”
Moscow was certainly “here” on this night, using nice ball movement to steadily pull away for a 36-21 halftime lead.
Midway through the third quarter, as Moscow’s Ben Postell was sinking the first of two free throws to make it 44-31 Moscow, the fire alarm went off. Fans were eventually ushered outside — a lovely night to be out in the cold.
When play resumed, Postell was obviously not frozen by the delay — the Bears got to hibernate in the locker room during the delay, anyway — hitting the second free throw, the first of 10 straight points by Moscow to open the lead up to 23.
“We didn’t come to play like we should have,” Stockwell said. “We’d better figure it out.”
Quinnett hit three of his four 3-pointers in the first half. Postell added 11 points, Derek Rauch-Edwards 10.
“We had really good energy,” Uhrig said. “If we have good energy, good stuff happens. Our focal point was, we had to get rebounds, we had to limit them to one shot. We did a good job cleaning up the glass, and taking care of the ball on the offensive end.”
Dylan Knight scored 14 points for Lakeland, which struggled with turnovers against Moscow’s pressure.
“We asked for best-2-out-of-3 for a reason,” Stockwell said. “Now we’ve got to go down there and take care of business.”
Lakeland 10 11 10 16 — 47
Moscow 18 18 16 14 — 66
LAKELAND — Taylor 0, Zubaly 2, Munyer 0, Johnson 5, Knight 14, Vahey 0, Davis 10, Skalskiy 0, Neilson 4, J. Haaland 7, Seay 2, N. Haaland 3.
MOSCOW — Lopez 3, Stephens 8, Broenneke 7, Johnson 0, Makamson 2, Quinnett 22, Rauch-Edwards 10, Smith 0, Decker 0, Postell 11, Pancheri 0, Kitchel 3, Skinner 0.
ALL-4A INLAND EMPIRE LEAGUE
Most Valuable Player — Robbie Johnson, sr., Sandpoint.
Newcomer of the Year — Jalen Skalskiy, fr., Lakeland
Coach of the Year — Josh Uhrig, Moscow.
ALL-LEAGUE — Gabe Quinnett, jr., Moscow; Cooper Stevens, sr., Moscow; Dylan Knight, sr., Lakeland; Dylan Vahey, sr., Lakeland; Alex Stockton, jr., Sandpoint.