Lake City boys overcome sloppy night to beat scrappy Coeur d'Alene

By MARK NELKE

Sports editor

COEUR d’ALENE — Normally, an 11-point win over your rival — in their gym, no less — would be cause for celebration.

But Lake City, ranked No. 1 in 5A by the state’s media, has the bar set much higher this year.

Ten days after beating Coeur d’Alene by 29 points, the Timberwolves led throughout again, but had to overcome poor shooting to scrap and finish off the Vikings 45-34 on Friday night in Inland Empire League play at Viking Court.

“It was an ugly game for us,” said Lake City junior guard Kolton Mitchell, who scored a game-high 15 points for Lake City (15-0, 4-0 IEL), including back-to-back layups in the final seconds of the first half to send Lake City to the locker room with a 21-14 lead.

“We played well defensively, but we’ve got to execute better on offense, especially those last five minutes. When it comes down to crunch time and they’re pressing, I’ve got to do a better job of putting us in an offense and protecting the ball.”

Zach Johnson added 10 points for the T-Wolves, and Blake Buchanan had eight points, 10 rebounds and five blocked shots.

“We won the game because of our defense and our rebounding and our hustle; all of those things were good,” Lake City coach Jim Winger said. “But offensively, I’m not sure we ran our offense the entire night, we got wrapped up in the circus. Pretty undisciplined for us offensively, some careless turnovers. Pretty frustrated with the offensive end of the floor tonight. But I thought defensively we were excellent. We hustled our butts off; we were ready to play, but on offense, we totally went off the rails.”

Mitchell’s three-point play with 6:45 left in the game increased Lake City’s lead to 38-23. Coeur d’Alene kept up the pressure, forced some T-Wolf turnovers and pulled within 42-34 with 1:08 remaining. But Coeur d’Alene missed 5 of 6 free throws during one stretch of that comeback, and finished 5 of 14 from the free-throw line for the game.

“They play really hard,” Coeur d’Alene coach Jon Adams said of Lake City. “They got all the hustle points on us, which was disappointing. They had an answer for every run we had. You hold the top team in the state to 45 points, you’re right where you want to be defensively. We just need to get our offense going.”

Cooper Larson, Cameren Cope and Logan Orchard scored eight points each for Coeur d’Alene.

“They’re a real scrappy team; that’s what they’re best at,” Mitchell said of the Vikings. “At the end we got really sloppy, and that let them get a run and got the crowd into it.”

On Thursday, Coeur d’Alene travels to Post Falls. Lake City returns to action next Saturday at home vs. Mead.

Lake City 11 10 11 13 — 45

Coeur d’Alene 5 9 9 11 — 34

LAKE CITY — Buchanan 8, Strawn 2, Jones 1, Miller 0, Kiesbuy 3, Hocking 6, Z. Johnson 10, Mitchell 15.

COEUR d’ALENE — Entzi 0, King 0, C. Larson 8, Wellsandt 0, Nipp 7, Cope 8, Burgess 3, Orchard 8.