Lake City's ship keeps sailing
COEUR d’ALENE — After enduring a tough stretch just past the midway point of their season, the Lake City Timberwolves are back to playing attacking, high-scoring basketball.
Nic McCartin scored 22 points, mostly on driving layins, and Hunter Schaffer hit three 3-pointers and added 16 points as Lake City won big on the road for the second time in three nights, this time 69-54 over the Coeur d’Alene Vikings in the second-place, loser-out game in the 5A Region 1 boys basketball tournament Thursday night at Elmer Jordan Court.
“We’ve played some good basketball all year,” Lake City coach Jim Winger said. “We’ve had maybe four games all season where the light was off, but when the light’s on, we play good basketball.”
Lake City (13-11) will play Boise (21-3) on Saturday at 3 p.m. at Grangeville High in a state play-in game.
Coeur d’Alene finished 12-11.
James Carlson added 13 points and 12 rebounds for Lake City, and Kyle Manzardo had seven rebounds, four assists and a couple of steals for the T-Wolves.
Lake City broke the game open with a 15-0 run in the second quarter. Carlson started it with a drive into the lane for a short jumper. Kolden followed with a steal and a three-point play. McCartin drilled a 3 from the left baseline. Jack Kiesbuy hit a 3, McCartin stole the ball and scored, and soon the T-Wolves were up 34-18 with 2:15 left in the half.
It was 38-20 at intermission.
Coeur d’Alene picked up the pressure in the second half and inched closer, but Lake City made enough plays to stave off the comeback.
Sam Matheson, who scored 18 of his 20 points in the second half, hit a 3-pointer to pull Coeur d’Alene within 43-31 midway through the third quarter. But Lake City responded with a 7-0 run — two driving layins by McCartin, and a 3 by Schaffer — to boost the lead back up to 19.
Coeur d’Alene came no closer than 14 the rest of the way.
Lake City shot 57.8 percent (26 of 45) from the field, but was below 50 percent from the line much of the night before ending up 12 for 24.
“Give these kids the credit,” Winger said. “We lost three in a row, 48-47 in league, which I’ve never seen, but we haven’t missed a beat in practice. They’ve kept both feet on the ship; nobody’s tried to jump overboard. They kept their head up and worked hard. Sometimes when you go through that and you keep your head, keep your thought about team, good things will work out for you.”
Caleb Beggerly scored 15 points for Coeur d’Alene, which took 29 of its 51 shots from behind the arc (10 for 29).
“We had a game plan tonight,” Coeur d’Alene coach Tony Hanna said. “and sometimes in these pressure games, we lose our minds a little bit. The first half, you can’t let Schaffer get wide open, he’s too good of a shooter. We gave him a couple of wide-open looks in the first quarter. ... McCartin did a really good job of getting to the rim tonight; we didn’t do a good job keeping him in front of us.
“We went through each one of their guys, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Unfortunately we didn’t take away their strengths tonight. We let them play to their strengths.”
Boise won the 5A Central Idaho Conference, but lost twice at districts to slip to the No. 5 seed from District 3.
“Now we’ve got a shot to get to where most of these kids have been working for since they were sophomores,” Winger said. “If we keep doing what we been doing, we’ve got a heckuva shot.”
Lake City 19 19 18 13 — 69
Coeur d’Alene 15 5 19 15 — 54
LAKE CITY — Schaffer 16, McCartin 22, Kolden 8, Carlson 13, Manzardo 3, Kiesbuy 3, Pollow 4.
COEUR d’ALENE — Kile 0, Delbridge 3, Whittaker 6, Matheson 20, Friesz 2, Beggerly 15, Hostetter 3, Johnson 2, Edwards 3.