5A REGION 1 GIRLS BASKETBALL: Trilogy time on Tuesday

By JASON ELLIOTT

Sports writer

Coeur d’Alene High girls basketball coach Nicole Symons wanted to see it.

So did the Lake City Timberwolves.

On Tuesday, the rivals will take the court for the third time this season, but this time for a berth to the state 5A tournament on the line.

Coeur d’Alene (19-3), the top seed in the 5A Region 1 tournament, handled No. 4 Lewiston 61-41 at Viking Court on Friday, while No. 2 Lake City (19-3) beat No. 3 Post Falls 50-36 at Lake City High in the other opening-round game.

“It’s always a fun game to play against them,” Symons said of Lake City. “Two rivals playing, it doesn’t get much better than that. They always give us a good game. We just want to make sure that we hold tight and get our matchups and assignments right. We don’t want to let them get hot from the 3-point line. Hopefully we can handle business, but it’s going to be a high-emotion game. It’s a game I wanted to play and it’s going to be a great game for the community to come out and see.”

This will be the fourth straight year Coeur d'Alene and Lake City have met in the regional title game. Lake City won in 2019, and Coeur d'Alene won the last two years.

“This is what our kids wanted,” Lake City coach James Anderson said after the Timberwolves beat Post Falls for the third time in three tries this season. “They wanted a chance to play them again. Coeur d’Alene is a good basketball team and they’ve got some fantastic basketball players and we’re going to have to play our best game to beat them. Hopefully we can be focused and want to put our best foot on the floor and control the things we can control and it gives us a chance to win.”

Coeur d'Alene won both games with Lake City during Inland Empire League play, with a 62-48 win at Lake City on Jan. 11 and a 60-58 win at home on Jan. 21.

“Think we’ve got to focus on ourselves more than anything,” Anderson said. “We started to kind of dip a little bit because we were focusing on some outward things. Now, we’re focusing on ourselves and making ourselves right. We know who they are enough now that we’ve got to be sure we can do what we do well and make them adjust to us.”

Post Falls (15-7) will host Lewiston (9-12) in a loser-out game on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.

It will be the fourth meeting between the two teams this season, with the Trojans winning the first three.

“Each game with Lewiston has been a fairly close game,” Post Falls coach Marc Allert said. “We’re pretty familiar with each other at this point and there won’t be any surprises. It’s going to come down to whoever executes the best and gets themselves better.”

In the most recent meeting, Post Falls won 61-26 win over the Bengals on Jan. 21.

“At this point, none of those previous games matter,” Allert said. “It’s going to come down to whoever executes the best.”

Lake City 50, Post Falls 36: Sophomore guard Avery Waddington scored 10 of her 17 points in the fourth quarter for the Timberwolves, hitting all four of her free throws in the final eight minutes.

“Avery was terrific tonight,” Anderson said. “Even more so on the offensive, but the defensive side, that’s where she gets herself going. She’s been making some really good decisions the last two games. I thought she was really good on Tuesday, even if she didn’t get as many shots. Some nights the shots are there, and some nights they aren’t, but she had two really good games in a row for her. I’m happy to see her get her confidence rolling. She’s a huge piece in what we’re doing and what we do.”

Lake City limited Post Falls to five field goals in the first half to take a 23-13 halftime lead.

“We kind of drifted away from focusing on our defense,” Anderson said. “We’re trying to get better at some other things and lost focus on some of the basics. In the last week or so, we’ve been focused on sharpening our half-court defense and getting back to who we were at the start of the season. I’m pleased with it.”

Senior guard Trinidie Nichols led Post Falls with 10 points.

“We didn’t do the things we needed to do to win that game either offensively or defensively,” Allert said. “We weren’t really in sync all night and made too many mistakes, with too many turnovers and too many missed free throws and too many missed shots. We just couldn’t get into the flow it seems, and every time we made a little run, Lake City came back and matched it.”

Post Falls used an 11-2 run out of halftime to pull within a 25-24 deficit before the Timberwolves pulled away at the start of the fourth quarter.

“We just didn’t play well enough to win,” Allert said. “Give Lake City credit. They did a good job tonight.”

Post Falls 5 8 16 7 — 36

Lake City 10 13 9 18 — 50

POST FALLS — McLean 0, Nichols 10, Heath 4, Brennan 2, Sims 4, Asper 0, Crane 9, Christensen 7.

LAKE CITY — Ke. Pickford 9, Ka. Pickford 2, Bowman 2, Zufelt 4, Waddington 17, McKellips 5, Holzer 2, Reynolds 7, Zimmerman 0.

Coeur d’Alene 61, Lewiston 41: With the Vikings leading the Bengals 21-17 at halftime, Symons stressed to her team to pick up the pace.

They answered, outscoring Lewiston 40-24 in the second half.

“We started to get on a run a couple of minutes into the third quarter,” Symons said. “We started to get some rebounds and transition buckets and kind of pushed it out from there.”

Sophomore guard Madison Mitchell scored 12 of her 14 points in the second half and senior Skylar Burke scored 19 points for Coeur d’Alene. Junior forward Madi Symons scored 14 points for the Vikings.

“Lewiston did a great job of taking away Madi’s (Symons) inside game,” Nicole Symons said. “We’re just a better team when we play faster. Madison Mitchell did a great job again tonight playing baseline-to-baseline defense.”

Katy Wessels scored 14 points for Lewiston.

“Kelsey Carroll played a great game defensively against Katy and played some good quality minutes,” Nicole Symons said. “Lily (Phenicie) had a great night and played well off the ball and really got us going emotionally. It was just a great team win tonight.”

Lewiston 9 8 11 13 — 41

Coeur d’Alene 8 13 21 19 — 61

LEWISTON — Collins 7, U’Ren 7, Arellano 0, Wessels 14, Riddle 0, Kessinger 2, Ortiz 9, Jackson 0, Taylor 2, DeGroot 0, Burke 0.

COEUR d’ALENE — Mitchell 14, Awbery 2, Symons 14, Jones 0, Naccarato 0, Holecek 4, Phenicie 6, Carroll 2, Burke 19.