Trojans make adjustments, top T-Wolves
Solid first half falls by wayside for Lake City
After playing one of its poorest opening halves of the season, the Post Falls boys basketball team made two simple adjustments.
The Trojans wanted more spacing to allow their guards to penetrate Lake City’s zone defense. And when the guards couldn’t get to the rim because of the Timberwolves’ size, they kicked it out to open teammates.
Post Falls’ shots started dropping in the final two quarters, as the No. 2-ranked Trojans stopped upset-minded Lake City 46-40 in a 5A Inland Empire League game Friday at Post Falls.
“I was impressed watching the way Lake City played defense against us (in the first half),” Post Falls coach Mike McLean said. “I’m sitting there looking at (their coaching staff) thinking they did a great job preparing those kids. It took us about a half to figure out how we are going to make our adjustments.”
The Trojans’ Dalton Thompson made a 3-pointer from the corner off a kick-out pass from Max McCullough to give Post Falls a 42-38 lead with 3:02 remaining in the game.
Then after LC committed a turnover, Post Falls’ next possession was a microcosm of the T-Wolves’ second-half breakdowns after a solid first half.
Post Falls got four offensive rebounds against the much taller T-Wolves. Two of those rebounds were tracked down by the 5-foot-9 McCullough. Before LC got the ball back, Thompson made both ends of a one-and-one to extend the lead to 44-38 with 1:18 to go.
LC coach Jim Winger lit up his team in a postgame speech.
“That one there was for the taking and we went to running our own program out there,” Winger said. “The first half was executed great, we reversed the ball, we didn’t get beat on the dribble (and) we rebounded the heck out of the ball. We go out in the second half (and) we never reversed the ball, we were awful rebounding the ball and we got beat on the bounce. If people are walking out of here thinking they’re the No. 2 team in the state and what a great effort by us – I’m not buying that at all. That is a game we should have won and our execution wasn’t good enough.”
Thompson led PF (14-1, 2-0) with 15 points and six rebounds. Nick Hancock led LC (8-6, 1-2) with 21 points and seven boards.