THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Lake City adds a game, and keeps it in the family

The trash-talking — or perhaps more accurately, trash-texting — began well before Lake City boys basketball coach Jim Winger could even officially announce the just-arranged scheduling matchup with his team.

Needing another game to give them the allowed 21 games in the regular season, the Timberwolves, the top-ranked team in 5A, will play host to St. Maries, one of the better teams in 2A, on Wednesday, Feb. 1.

More newsworthy, it will be the matchup of the cousins — senior Blake Buchanan of Lake City against senior Tyler Renner and junior Wyatt Holmes of St. Maries.

Wyatt’s brother Landon, a sophomore, is on the Lumberjacks junior varsity.

Their mothers are the Martin sisters from St. Maries — Debbie (Blake), Sara (Tyler) and Janel (Wyatt and Landon).

St. Maries coach Bryan Chase said the cousin angle was appealing — as was the chance to play a team like Lake City.

“Any time you can play one of the best teams in the Northwest, and probably the best team North Idaho has seen in a long time …" said Chase, whose team is 7-3 entering this week..

LAKE CITY had been looking for a game since North Central of Spokane pulled out of a late-December matchup.

Winger said Dominic Brooks, who put together the Nike Northwest Invitational in December at North Idaho College that ultimately pitted Lake City vs. defending state 5A champion Owyhee of Meridian, thought he could still hook Lake City up with Garfield of Seattle. The two were originally set to meet at NIC before Garfield pulled out.

Then there was talk of Lake City taking on Hillcrest, a 4A team from the Idaho Falls area which began the week 14-1.

Then Kellogg.

Then St. Maries stepped up, on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago.

“I’m such a dinosaur (with social media); it’s funny how quick things go,” Winger said. “I went to practice (later Saturday) and I said (to Buchanan), “Hey, it looks like we might play St. Maries and he said ‘Yeah, my cousins are already texting me.’

“OK,” Winger said. “I thought I was going to make a splash — hey, we got our 21st game — and most of them already knew about it.”

STARTING TONIGHT, this Lake City unit that rolled through last year’s regular season before stumbling at state, and is off to a 13-0 start this year and has won each game by at least 20 points, has just three regular season home games remaining, plus likely two more at districts.

Fans are flocking to Lake City home games, even necessitating the upstairs bleachers to be pulled out.

In short — catch these guys while you can. You may never see a squad like this again.

But don’t just take my word for it.

“That’s a special, special group,” longtime Post Falls coach Mike McLean said last week, after Lake City turned an eight-point lead into a 32-point romp over the Trojans in just a few minutes. “I hope people here in North Idaho who are basketball fans … I’m an opposing coach in the league who should not be saying this, but if you love basketball, you’ve got to come watch Blake Buchanan. We’ve played in national tournaments; he reminds me of Evan Mobley (now with the Cleveland Cavaliers) at Rancho Christian when we played them (in Las Vegas) … Evan Mobley’s game and Blake Buchanan’s, they are the same type of player at the high school level. They’re just different than anybody that we’ve ever played against.”

The only thing that surprises McLean, he said, is that Lake City doesn’t have a win streak of 50-some games, like 1A Division I juggernaut Lapwai does.

“They play with more confidence,” McLean said of this year’s team. “I didn’t think they’d lose a game last year; those teams pulled off a miracle in my opinion. I don’t know what their weakness is; they should be 55, 56-0. When you have Blake … what Zach (Johnson) does, the things Kolton (Mitchell) can do. They’ve got all the pieces.”

And on those nights their shots don’t fall …

“Their length on the defensive end is something that most high school kids just don’t see,” McLean said. “That’s a college team.

“I would say we’re slightly undersized as a high school team. That’s a bad math problem.”

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.