Lakeland turns corner, wins fifth straight in IEL

A month ago, the Lakeland High girls basketball team found itself winless in the Inland Empire League after four starts.

Lakeland coach Steve Seymour wasn’t overly concerned, however. After all, his Hawks’ widest margin of defeat in the stretch was by six points.

So Seymour knew things would turn around.

Lakeland crawled over the .500 mark in conference Friday, avenging an earlier narrow loss to Sandpoint with a convincing 59-46 victory in Rathdrum.

The Hawks (11-5 overall), who have won five straight league games since their 0-4 start, fired on all cylinders against the Bulldogs (10-5, 5-4), who tripped Lakeland 38-36 in mid-December.

“I was really pleased with the start tonight,” said Seymour, who watched the Hawks open 7-0 and 10-2 leads. “It was a lot better than how we started at Sandpoint. Up there it was a little tougher to get out of the blocks.”

Sandpoint bounced back as if the game would be as tightly played as the first meeting last month. A three-point play by Kendal Burt gave the Bulldogs their first and only lead at 14-12 at the 6:19 mark of the second quarter.

Lakeland answered, using a 10-0 run to start pulling away.

“We had a hard time running the floor (at Sandpoint),” Seymour said. “We did a much better job getting out and pushing the tempo.”

Lakeland’s full-court pressure also began to take a toll on Sandpoint in the second half. The Bulldogs committed 24 turnovers, and the Hawks took advantage of back-to-back mistakes midway in the fourth quarter to open their biggest lead at 53-35.

“We just wanted to make sure that the game was played 94 feet,” Seymour said. “We may not have got a ton of turnovers, but they weren’t getting a ton of points out of transition, either. So that’s kind of the litmus test there.”

Sandpoint struggled for a number of reasons. First, usually accurate shooter Ashleigh Mire had problems finding her range, finishing 5 of 20 from the field. And post Elle Carne, who led the Bulldogs with eight points in the first half, picked up her fourth foul just 11 seconds into the second half and had to sit for more than a quarter.

Although Mire finished with a game-high 15 points, Seymour praised guard Jessie Bartlett for solid defense on the Bulldogs guard. Bartlett held Mire to two points in the first game between the teams.

“She got her points, but some of her shots were closer to the halfcourt line than the 3-point line,” Seymour said. “Jessie played great defense.”

Sandpoint coach Scott Salesky was more concerned with another statistic, however. Rebounding.

“Rebounding – the lack of,” Salesky said. “We rebounded poorly. That’s the biggest key in the ballgame. Our inability to break the press consistently and our inability to keep them off the boards were keys.”

Lakeland and Sandpoint are tied for the top seed among the league’s 4A teams with Moscow just a game behind.

“I don’t know how it all shakes out right now to tell you the truth,” Seymour said. “I just knew that we had kind of a rocky start and we had some ground to make up.”

Post Brigitte Boucher led Lakeland with 14 points and Ashley Beck added 12.

Both teams return to league play tonight when Lakeland plays host to Moscow and Sandpoint goes to Post Falls.