Eagles, Knights triumph
CALDWELL, Idaho – Motivation comes in many forms. For the Post Falls Christian boys basketball team Wednesday, inspiration sprung out of embarrassment.
And the threat of an abbreviated one-game stay at state.
Lakeside, meanwhile, had plenty of motivation, but sometimes the minds and the bodies weren’t in sync. Still, the Knights were too much for the Musher Dogs of Camas County.
Post Falls Christian pulled off the rally of the State 1A tournament opening day as the Eagles finally took flight in a 59-52 win over Rockland at Caldwell High School.
Down the road at Vallivue High School, second-ranked Lakeside dug in for a unpretentious 50-40 victory over Camas County.
NSL and District I runner-up PFC (17-7) will meet No. 1-ranked Troy (23-1) in the quarterfinals tonight at 5:15 PST at Caldwell, while league and district champ Lakeside (22-1) takes on Notus (21-2) at 7 at Vallivue.
In other openers at Vallivue, Nezperce downed Council 69-61 and Cascade pulled away from Raft River 59-42.
In other openers at Caldwell, Mackay held off Idaho City 56-55; Richfield topped Horseshoe Bend 57-46; and Notus edged Lapwai 58-57.
Post Falls Christian 59, Rockland 52
Eagles coach Tim Mitchell challenged his players’ heart at halftime.
“I said you’ve got two options,” Mitchell said. “You can step up your game and play our style of basketball, or we can forfeit the next game and go home. It’s that simple.”
The turnaround wasn’t immediate, though. The Eagles trailed 27-15 at intermission, and the deficit grew to 47-33 with 6:30 remaining in the game.
That’s when PFC pulled off a comeback they’ll talk about at the tiny private school for years to come.
In a matter of 3 minutes, PFC went from 14 points behind to a 51-47 lead. Just your run-of-the-mill 18-point about-face.
For nearly 26 minutes of the 32-minute game, the Eagles didn’t look like the Eagles who normally don their blue uniforms.
Senior Brack Adkins, who didn’t start but played the third-most minutes off a deep bench, was at the point of PFC’s full-court press that forced seven turnovers during the pivotal run.
“Coach yelled at me and told me I needed to get my head in the game (at halftime),” Adkins said. “It’s my senior year, so I did everything I could to get the team’s confidence back up where we could win.”
Adkins scored 10 of his game-high 18 points in the final 5:31. He drove from the deep corner and scored while being fouled with 2:01 to go. His free throw extended PFC’s lead to 56-50.
“He played loose basketball,” Mitchell said. “If the ball’s loose, you get it, and he went out there and showed his senior leadership. Every loose ball he went and got down the stretch.”
The 6-foot Adkins will draw a key defensive assignment tonight against Troy. If the Tigers break the Eagles’ press, Adkins will guard 6-7 post Aaron Smith, who signed to play at the University of Idaho.
“I’m just going to try to be real physical with him and hopefully get in his head a little bit,” Adkins said. “I’ll be lower than him, and I can steal the ball when he brings it down.”
It was obvious that Rockland (13-11) ran out of gas. The Bulldogs didn’t give any of their starters a break until late in the third quarter.
“Nobody outruns us in the fourth quarter,” Mitchell said. “We’ve conditioned all year. Look at them. They’re not breathing hard.”
PFC junior guard Tim Laux had 17 points, four steals and four rebounds. Sophomore Danny Anderson added 12 points and 10 rebounds.
Lakeside 50, Camas County 40
The Knights used a 15-0 run that began with 10 straight points in the second quarter and ended early in the third to separate from the Musher Dogs.
Senior point guard Tim Wolfe hit a driving basket to give Lakeside its biggest lead at 40-22 with 4:12 remaining in the third quarter. But the Knights would score just 10 more points the final 12:12.
Some of it was by design. Lakeside coach Stacey Sonder wanted his team to spend some time walking the ball up the court and being patient because he believes controlling the tempo tonight against Lapwai will be key.
Some of the lack of scoring was because of sloppy passing and unforced turnovers.
“We wanted to have good clock management the second half,” Sonder said. “That’s what our intentions were. We get too excited sometimes, and I wanted them to be a little bit more patient. We can’t afford to be excited like that all the time. When we play in the North Star League we can get away with some of that. It’s not as competitive. I don’t know if that’s the right word. You come down here and a whole different level of basketball. We want to make sure we control the tempo as much as we can and control the clock as best as we can, too.”
As senior post Arthur Elwell said, it was a win and it preserved Lakeside’s hopes of playing for gold come Saturday.
“It wasn’t one of our better games,” Elwell said, smiling. “Towards the end we played really sloppy. We knew we were up so we kind of coasted.”
Wolfe led with 13 points.