THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Big win for Lake City, but bigger prize awaits in March

Whether Saturday’s long-awaited but quickly arranged game was the prequel to the sequel, or just a standalone event, we’ll find out in March.

After Lake City High's 80-60 victory over defending state 5A boys basketball champion Owyhee of Meridian on a “neutral” court at North Idaho College, both sides tried to keep the result in perspective.

State title trophies in Idaho are handed out in early March, not in early December.

Still …

“It means a lot, just knowing where we’re at in the state, and knowing how good we really are,” said Lake City senior guard Kolton Mitchell, who scored a school-record 39 points. “But at the end of the day, we’ve got to get back to work on Monday, and keep grinding. We’re probably going to see them in March, and I know they’re going to be a different team then, and we will too.”

Lake City coach Jim Winger reminded that the game was only the third of the season for the T-Wolves (3-0) — and just the second for Owyhee (1-1).

“But it’s good for our confidence, and good for our MaxPreps (ranking); we’d like to play that later game if we make it to state,” Winger said. “So it’s significant, mainly for elevating our confidence. If that game didn’t do it, I don’t know what would.”

THIS SEASON, the top-seeded team (based on regular season MaxPreps rankings) will play the fourth and final game of the first round at state, on a Thursday night.

Last year, Lake City was the No. 1 seed and played the first game at noon, and was upset by Centennial. That kept the T-Wolves from a matchup with Owyhee in the title game.

Last year, Owyhee’s first year as a school, the Storm lost just three games — one by 11, one to Eagle in four overtimes, and one by three points at a tournament in La Verne, Calif., going 3-1 vs. four California schools.

So losing by 20 is something new.

“We haven’t lost like that as a program, and we haven’t lost like that as a staff,” said second-year Owyhee coach Andy Harrington, who coached at Middleton for three years before taking the Owyhee job. “It was humbling; it was good for us. You can take a lot in your second game of the year from something like that.”

Owyhee High benefitted right away from being a new school, and kids wanting to be part of a new program.

Jack Payne, last year’s 5A Player of the Year, who is now redshirting at Colorado State, came from Boise High, where as a junior he played against Lake City at state.

Two other key players transferred in, in part to get away from COVID-19 restrictions in their home states — 6-foot-5 guard Liam Campbell, now a junior, and 6-7 sophomore Jackson Rasmussen.

Rasmussen also has an older brother who has committed to play football at Boise State.

And Campbell’s father Jeff, who was the volleyball coach at Cal State Northridge, coached the current Northwest Nazarene coach (Doug English) in college, so he’s familiar with the Treasure Valley.

Liam Campbell already has roughly a dozen Division I offers, from the likes of Washington State, USC, Stanford, Boise State, Saint Mary’s, Texas and Villanova.

And despite facing a couple of pretty good defenders in Nathan Hocking, who has signed with NAIA Ottawa University in Surprise, Ariz.; and Zach Johnson, who has committed to play football at Idaho, Campbell still was a load, hitting four 3s and leading Owyhee with 29 points.

Rasmussen, who is back playing after suffering a broken collarbone during football season, also holds an offer from WSU. He had 14 points on Saturday.

A couple of others took advantage of an open-enrollment period at the school.

“That’s just the nature of sports across the world,” Harrington said. “In the NBA it’s happening, college sports it’s happening. Major League Soccer it’s happening. People are moving, and it’s happening more and more, as you’ve seen with Lake City.”

True. Lake City has two transfers in center Blake Buchanan, the Virginia signee who played at Moscow as a freshman; and Hocking, who transferred from Ferris prior to his junior year.

Owyhee High is located just north and a little east of the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa, site of the state 5A boys and girls tournament, perhaps 6 minutes from the arena, Harrington said.

If you’ve ever driven from Boise to Meridian to Nampa, you’ve noticed that in recent years what used to be fields is now homes and businesses. It's starting to look that way around Owyhee.

“The area where Owyhee is located is growing at an incredibly fast rate,” said Harrington, 30. “That’s one of the reasons I took the job is the appeal to go where the growth is, and the growth is right there. We’re literally in the middle of a corn field. It’s still growing like crazy.”

BACK TO Saturday night.

Neither team is worried about its win/loss record. Next up for Lake City is a high-caliber tournament in western Washington, beginning today. The T-Wolves will also face three other Boise-area schools — Meridian, Eagle and Bishop Kelly — at home on back-to-back-to-back days in late December.

Owyhee, meanwhile, is headed back to the same tournament in California the Storm played in last year, then is off to Florida for a couple of games.

“It’s a long season. Hopefully we’ll get another chance at those guys,” Harrington said after the loss to Lake City.

Winger heaped praise on Owyhee afterward.

“I think they’re a great team, they looked like a bunch of great athletes out there,” he said. “And they had to drive in two vans all the way here (last week), and we're staying in our own beds. That’s why the state tournament is a big advantage to the Boise schools; you’re in your own beds, doing the same routine all the time. That’s a real big deal.”

So in the end, Lake City (2-1) enjoyed its win on Saturday, but knows there’s still plenty of work to do if the T-Wolves are to achieve their goal in March.

“We can be happy today,” Winger said Saturday, “but we go back to work on Monday. We’re playing in a very good tournament next week — we want to win those first two games, and play Curtis (in the finals). We watched them at Section 7 (in Arizona in June, where Lake City went 4-0 and won its bracket), and they’re a very, very good team.

“That’s our goal, but we’ve got to take care of business Thursday and Friday,” Winger added. “We’ll enjoy it today, but we’ve still got some things we can improve on.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.