THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: A different verse for 5A, 4A IEL teams

When he recorded "Looks Like We Made It" in 1976, Barry Manilow obviously wasn't thinking ahead to the Inland Empire League in the 2020-21 school year.

But the song — at least the title of it, anyway — certainly applies, especially in girls basketball.

The IEL didn't make it this far in volleyball or soccer this fall, or in boys basketball this winter.

The IEL had hoped to play a combined schedule in team sports this year, with the four 5A schools and the three 4A schools playing each other twice in team sports, with all games counting toward seeding for the 5A and 4A Region 1 tournaments.

BUT COVID had other ideas.

In the fall, Moscow's decision to not play because of COVID fears, then its change of heart and decision to rejoin the league, meant not everybody had time to play each other twice, so they went back to separate 4A and 5A IELs, as they've done for a decade.

Ditto this week in boys basketball, after Moscow's COVID issues meant its second game with Coeur d'Alene will not be played.

The girls, however, made it to the finish line in league play, everyone getting in their 12 league games.

Not that it seemed to make that much of a difference, it appears.

"It never really felt that different to me, from the sense of the 4A games counting — maybe just a little bit," Lake City girls coach James Anderson.

Lake City (12-5) and Post Falls (11-6) finished tied for second in the IEL with 9-3 records, trailing league champion Coeur d'Alene (16-1, 12-0).

As the season unfolded, Lake City and Post Falls each knew they would face each other in Friday's first round of the 5A Region 1 tournament.

The only question was where.

Lake City earned the No. 2 seed, and the right to host that game, with its 12-point win over Post Falls last Friday.

Post Falls had won by 10 points at Lake City earlier in the season, so Lake City knew it had to win the rematch by 11 or more points to earn the higher seed.

"We never talked about it, until there was two minutes left in the game, was the first time I made them aware of that," Anderson said of the point-differential scenario. "We knew we needed to win by 11 to host, but that was never the talk, and that was never the goal."

Anderson was more happy with the way his seniors stepped up in the second half and rallied for the win over Post Falls.

"We’ve gone through a lot this year, some struggles, so it feels good to have a little momentum going into (this) week, when they really start to matter, and hopefully these seniors can close it out the right way," Anderson said.

As for hosting — which comes into play on Friday, and could again next week if the two teams meet again for a spot in a state play-in game ...

"We weren't super concerned about that, but it’s nice to be back home, for sure," Anderson said. "Especially now that there’s fans, it has a bigger implication than it did. I wasn’t really worried about it a week ago, 10 days ago, but now that there’s fans, it’ll be nice."

Post Falls coach Marc Allert noted that if his team scores six points in a half again — as it did in the second half against Lake City — it wouldn't matter where Friday's game was played.

"If you look at our scores and Lake City’s scores, we pretty much played the same schedule … it’s all pretty darn close," Allert said after last week's game. "Tonight they got the better of us.

"We talked about it earlier in the year — second or third, we’re going to play em anyway," Allert added. "Then with the COVID thing … with no fans ... Now with fans, it’s going to be a bigger deal. We just made it harder on ourselves. But we'll just go do it again next week."

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.