THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: 'No ego': How Jim Winger, Kelly Reed and John Astorquia pooled their 100-plus years of coaching experience and produced a Lake City boys basketball team for the ages

The expectations of the Lake City High boys basketball team heading into the 2022-23 season were enormous.

A senior-laden team with four players who had committed to play in college — three in basketball (one in the storied Atlantic Coast Conference), and one in football.

A group that expected to play in the state title game as juniors — especially after three of them played for the state title as sophomores — but was upset in the first round at state.

So as seniors, anything less than a state title would have been a huge disappointment.

So of course, on the eve of the start of preseason practice, the Lake City coaching staff decided in unison to try something completely new — an offense assistant coach Kelly Reed had learned while observing the University of Virginia team practice for a week or so this past August.

“I went home and thought, ‘Man, we’re going to do something we haven’t done?’” Lake City head coach Jim Winger said. “And all these kids are seniors? That’s how much we believed, us three. I could have said no.”

But he didn’t — a nod to the respect Winger had for Reed and his other assistant coach, John Astorquia.

Together, they had more than 100 years of coaching experience — Winger a head coach for 26 seasons, Reed an assistant for most of his 30-year career, and Astorquia doing a little bit of everything over half a century as a coach.

And this combination — Winger as the head coach, Reed handling the offense and Astorquia coaching the defense — helped produce a 26-0 state champion and one of the most dominant teams in Idaho high school history.

“It was total democracy,” Reed said of the coaching staff. “In the end, of course, Jim made the final decision … but most of the time we agreed on quite a bit of stuff.

“But it’s also healthy not to (agree), always. I remember back in football, Trox (Lake City head football coach Van Troxel) and Henry (Hamill, an assistant) and me (also an assistant), we … mainly Henry and Trox … yeah, there would be some educated arguments. But we didn’t have too many of those in basketball.”

“The No. 1 thing why it worked so well was there was no ego — both the coaches and the players,” added Astorquia, who was head coach at Twin Falls High for 14 years, spanning from the late 1970s into the early ’90s. “If the team is the goal, then everybody puts their own individual egos away and focuses on what’s important, and in this case, team/family. And that went not just for the 10 players, but for the three of us also.”

ABOUT THAT offense …

Screens and dribble handoffs were not part of it.

Spacing and cutting were.

“Some of the stuff I learned in Charlottesville really opened my eyes to some things,” said Reed, like Winger a Coeur d’Alene High grad, who was head coach at Priest River High for two years in the mid-1990s, and has coached various sports at Lake City since 1996.

“We didn’t set any screens if we didn’t run a set play,” Reed said. “In our base offense we didn’t screen anybody. Which is really, really strange. How many ball screens did Blake (Buchanan; the Virginia signee) set for Kolton (Mitchell; the Idaho State signee)? None. During the course of the year, he set a couple against Owyhee because Kolton was hot, and there may have been one a game.”

Reed brought this offensive idea to Winger and Astorquia just before tryouts in November. He wasn’t sure how long it would take the T-Wolves to get comfortable with the offense. But Winger and Astorquia were intrigued right away, and the offense was installed.

“And he (Winger) needs a ton of credit for that, because he took a leap of faith,” Reed said. “And Astorquia was like, ‘So you’re telling me we’re not going to post up the best post player in the state of Idaho very often, in the post?’

“‘Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,’” Reed said with a sheepish laugh.

The spacing and the cutting made it difficult to double team — and if teams tried, someone was usually open cutting to the basket.

“It’s a continual movement and cutting offense,” Winger said. “You don’t set ball screens, you don’t do handoffs. It’s continual spacing and moving. By the time we got done with it (in the preseason) I said, ‘We’re doing this.’ It’s contrary to anything you’ve learned about basketball for over 30-some years.”

“I really think it’s the best offense I’ve ever seen, as far as a motion offense is concerned,” Astorquia said. “We became less structured, a little bit more flow-oriented.”

ABOUT THAT defense …

Statistically, Lake City was a very good defensive team the previous season. But, with the experience coming back and the athleticism the T-Wolves had, the coaches decided to take it up a notch.

“The whole goal this year was to be the aggressor,” Winger said. “Less emphasis on who’s a good shooter, who’s not a good shooter (on the other team): what they’re doing — just be on the attack, offensively and defensively, and be the aggressor, and I certainly thought we were defensively this year. We were outstanding.”

With its athleticism, Lake City could afford to be aggressive defensively, chase shooters off the 3-point line. The T-Wolves had quick-handed guards, lockdown defenders and shot blockers.

“We were athletic enough to control things,” Astorquia said. “Plus, it’s nice to have 6-10, 6-11 (Buchanan) back there at the rim (laughs). You can expose, and expose, but they still have to make a play at the end.

“We’ve got three guys back there. If you can get through Zach (Johnson; signed to play football at Idaho) and Nate (Hocking; signed to play basketball at NAIA Ottawa University of Prescott, Ariz.) and Blake, then more power to you.”

Lake City pressed at times just to switch things up, but most of its success came out of its half-court defense — trapping and scrambling and flying around. The T-Wolf defense fueled much of its offense.

“And as athletic as Nate and Zach were, we had an advantage there, because they could get from A to B in a hurry,” Astorquia said. “One of our goals was, no layups, and no baseline. Don’t give up the layup, don’t give up the baseline … anything else, we can take care of.”

As an example, Reed cited Lake City’s game in November at Curtis of University Place, Wash., last year’s Washington 3A champions. Curtis featured point guard Zoom Diallo, one of the top recruits in the class of 2024, with Gonzaga among his suitors.

“His first assignment was 6-6, super-athletic, Nathan Hocking,” Reed recalled. “Second assignment, when he gets tired, is 6-3, 220-pound Zach. And then, if needed, we can go to the 6-10 kid, who can guard anybody as well. And if Zoom happened to get by Nate, or Zach, then he ran into Blake.”

The result was a 12-point Lake City victory — one week after a 20-point win over defending Idaho 5A champion Owyhee of Meridian.

“Coach ‘A’ deserves a ton of credit for our defensive effort this year,” Reed said. “Speaking of experience, we used some of the stuff he used at Twin Falls 30 years ago. Defense was similar to what we’ve done, but with a little tweak this year. John did a great job with that. We had two or three scoreless quarters. We hold Highland to three points in a half. We gave up (44.5) a game, while scoring (73.9).”

REED PLAYED one season at Dominican College in San Rafael, Calif.

In the early years at Lake City, he was the T-Wolves’ JV boys coach. Reed has been a varsity assistant since 2008, when Winger returned for his second stint as head coach.

“I think offensively, he’s as good as I’ve been around,” Winger said of Reed.

Winger announced his resignation as head coach in May. Reed and Astorquia are not coming back, either. Reed, who is also the head boys golf coach and head track and field coach at Lake City, said he may consider coaching basketball again at some point. And Astorquia, 76, is a basketball lifer.

“The Astorquias went to school with my parents,” Reed said. “Jim’s been one of my best friends for almost three decades. Before I got married I probably spent more time at his house than my house. I was there every day. He has treated me unbelievably well in my time at Lake City, and I couldn’t be more thankful for all the opportunities he gave me at Lake City.

“His dad called me ‘No. 3’ (as in the No. 3 son, in addition to Jim and Mike),” Reed joked.

Reed graduated from Coeur d’Alene High in 1988, four years after Jim.

“I knew Mike (who was younger), but I didn’t know Jim, so I started calling him when I was at Priest River, because I liked how they were playing,” Reed recalled. “And Jim had that reputation of being … scary … so I was nervous to call him. But he was so awesome, we talked about basketball …”

When Reed was in his second year at Priest River, Winger said there might be a spot opening up on his coaching staff the next year.

Reed has been a T-Wolf ever since.

WINGER SAID he tries to find someone on the “outside” that he respects as a coach, and asks them what they see from his team — another set of eyes, as it were.

He noticed Astorquia at several of his Lake City games in the early 2010s — being a basketball junkie, Astorquia was going to a lot of high school games in the area at that time.

On time, during the 2013-14 season, when Lake City was running a lot of four-man, five-man motion offense, Winger gave Astorquia a call.

“I asked him toward the end of the year, ‘What are you seeing?’” Winger said. “He said, ‘On your motion you’re pretty tight; your spacing could be bigger and wider.’ And I think that’s a big part of why we got better offensively that year and finished the year so strong.”

Lake City went on to finish third at state.

The next year, Winger invited Astorquia to join the Lake City staff.

ASTORQUIA WAS born and raised in Twin Falls, and played football, basketball and baseball at Twin Falls High. He played football at Eastern Montana in Billings (now Montana State-Billings), and one year of baseball. One of his football teammates at Eastern Montana was Bart Templeman, of Iron Wood Throwers Camp fame.

After college, Astorquia spent five years at Minico High in Rupert, as assistant football and basketball coach, and head baseball coach.

Then the head football job at Twin Falls opened up, and Astorquia applied. But soon thereafter, the boys basketball job opened up at Twin, so he went after that job instead, and became the Bruins’ basketball coach for 14 years.

In 1993, with their youngest son graduated from high school, John and his wife, Rosie, moved to Coeur d’Alene. John went into the insurance business; Rosie became an administrator in the Coeur d’Alene School District.

John joined Larry Bieber’s staff at Coeur d'Alene High in 1996; in 1998, the Viking boys won their first state title in 25 seasons.

While at Twin Falls, Astorquia would occasionally also help out at the College of Southern Idaho, where the men’s basketball coach was Fred Trenkle.

When Trenkle landed the head coaching job at San Diego State in 1998, shortly after Coeur d’Alene had won its state title, he invited Astorquia to join him on the Aztecs’ staff.

Astorquia said he’d try it for a year.

Trenkle was fired after one season, Steve Fisher was hired, and the rest is history.

Astorquia returned to Coeur d’Alene and worked under Bieber for another five seasons, but had been out of coaching for about a decade when he got the call from Winger.

“It was a dream year,” Astorquia said of the 2022-23 Lake City season, “but it was a great 10 years for me, working with Kelly and Jim. They had a chemistry going with the two of them, and I was always concerned about hopefully not ruining that. Because chemistry is the most important part of any relationship. In this case, it worked out.”

MIKE McLEAN has been Post Falls boys basketball coach for 16 seasons. When the 1995 Post Falls High grad graduated from Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, his first coaching job was as JV boys basketball coach at Coeur d’Alene High — where Astorquia was the Vikings’ varsity assistant, under Bieber.

“That first year coaching at Coeur d’Alene, which was their last year there, I would just pick Astorquia’s brain … the guy’s like a walking encyclopedia of everything,” McLean recalled.

McLean coached against Winger for years, against Reed for years — and little did he know at the time, would coach against Astorquia for years.

“You just knew they were going to have something ready for you,” McLean said of the Lake City coaching trio. “After every timeout you knew Kelly was going to have some little wrinkle to throw at you. And I really learned a lot by watching Jim work officials. Even though he and I may not work officials the exact same way, I think he had an innate ability to — how do I say this? — cast his influence to officials.

“Astorquia was always attention to detail. It was always fun to battle them over the years. To walk in there and … you just knew you were going to be in a tough game with what they were going to try to throw at you.”

TEMPO.

Astorquia said the Lake City coaches realized the Timberwolves needed to force the action at both ends of the floor this season, rather than let the other team dictate the pace of the game.

The T-Wolves learned that lesson twice in recent years — both from Madison of Rexburg.

“A couple years ago, we went to a summer camp at Rocky (Mountain, of Meridian, prior to the 2021-22 season). And we played Madison one morning, in the upstairs gym. And they absolutely just steamrolled us. And it was just because they controlled the tempo. We turned around the next game and played Rocky, who was good at that time … and we just hammered them. But it was just night and day and a lesson in who's going to control the tempo in this game, and Madison had our number. And they had our number in the state tournament (in 2022).”

In that consolation title game at state, on a Saturday morning at Columbia High in Nampa, Lake City jumped out to an early lead, but Madison soon took control and won. So not only did the T-Wolves not win a state title that year, they didn’t even bring home a trophy.

“It (Madison’s tempo) bothered us a lot after that game, at the camp,” Astorquia recalled. “But we were still growing as a team, so we didn’t really get hit in the face with it until that game at state. Because they turned the table on us in a hurry after that first quarter.”

As sports would have it, Lake City and Madison met in this year’s state 5A semifinals, with Lake City prevailing in a tough one, 58-49.

“We proved our mettle this year against them — we were the ones that controlled that game,” Astorquia said. “That point guard … and inside kid played really great games. But, it was our control of what we wanted to do, rather than what they wanted to do, that finally ended up helping us.”

While the coaches pushed the right buttons, it takes players, of course, to win championships. And Lake City had the players.

“There was no question about this team’s focus,” Astorquia said. “They decided, a long time ago, that there wasn’t going to be, ‘Oh, I didn’t get my 20 tonight, I didn’t get this many steals, or this many blocks or this many dunks.’ It was like, ‘I might get five points, but if we win, I’m good.’

”And they showed up with that mentality every day. It was our goal every day to get better, somehow, someway. And they competed like crazy, every day in practice. We maybe had one not-so-good practice all year. Not a dud, but average. But the rest of them … “

Astorquia said he was part of a couple other really good teams in his career.

In addition to being a part of that 1998 Coeur d’Alene squad, he took Twin Falls to the state title game in 1983, only to lose to a Meridian team coached by Donny Haynes. Meridian had Scott Johnson, a guard who went on to play at SMU. Twin Falls had Andy Toolson, who later played at BYU and then with the Utah Jazz.

So of the three, which team was the best?

“Those two teams were comparable to this team, but never a team like this (Lake City team) … unbelievable,” Astorquia said. “These guys are No. 1, no question.”

“What‘s amazing about John, Kelly and I,” Winger said. “Month of June in the summer, and four months in the winter, you spend a lot of time with each other — practices, meeting, film — we have never had an argument, or a severe disagreement. We would disagree all the time, then we would make a decision on what we were going to go, and everybody accepted it. That’s pretty rare as well.”

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.