It’s a small miracle
Kent Leiss knows his team is one-dimensional, but he’s hard-pressed to do anything about it.
“We literally have nine guards on our roster,” Leiss said minutes after his Coeur d’Alene boys basketball team rallied and held on to beat Lake City 55-54 Friday night at Elmer Jordan Court. “We don’t have one post player. We struggle trying to get the basketball inside.”
That was evident throughout the Vikings’ victory, although CdA managed to improve to 4-1 overall and collected a win in its Inland Empire League opener. Lake City fell to 3-2 and 1-1 when Trent Bridges’ off-balance, one-handed heave rattled out of the bucket in the waning seconds.
Austin Heleker made five 3-pointers for CdA, three of them in the fourth quarter to aid his team’s recovery from an offensive meltdown during the middle two quarters.
Heleker’s final 3-pointer gave the Vikings a 47-45 edge with 4:53 remaining. Although Lake City managed to tie the game less than a minute later, the Timberwolves were unable to secure the lead again.
“Austin is a very good shooter,” Leiss said. “I’d say he’s our best shooter, consistently so.”
With 8 seconds left, CdA’s Nate Bligh called a timeout after he collected a loose ball along his team’s baseline. The Vikings couldn’t inbound the ball in the allotted 5 seconds, however, and gave Lake City a final chance to score. Bligh challenged Bridges’ last attempt, and the Timberwolves couldn’t control the rebound in time to attempt another shot.
“We got lucky,” Leiss said. “I thought Lake City played better than us for most of the game. But we made some shots at the end to win it.”
CdA jumped ahead early and held a 19-15 lead after the first quarter, but Lake City coach James Thacker implemented a mixture of a 1-3-1 press and a 2-3 zone defense that stymied the Vikings offense for two quarters. The Vikings complicated their problems by neglecting to drive inside, instead settling for repeated outside jumpers. In fact, CdA went a stretch of almost 14 minutes in which it didn’t score a field goal inside the arc.
“I think there were two minutes to go in the third quarter before we started feeling comfortable,” Leiss said, adding that zone defenses could hamper the small Vikings’ efforts to work the ball into the post effectively.
The Vikings were just efficient enough from beyond the 3-point arc against Lake City, converting 9 of 27 attempts to offset the Timberwolves’ 18-for-31 shooting from the floor. CdA finished 18 for 48 (37.5 percent) from the field.
CdA also won despite considerable foul trouble. Starting guard Andrew Prohaska fouled out in 10 minutes of action, and Bligh and Nate Clinton both escaped the contest with four fouls apiece for the Vikings, who had 20 fouls total. Lake City was whistled for 16 infractions.
“A big problem we had,” Leiss said, “is that we did not adjust to the officiating. It was extremely tight in the first two quarters compared to what we saw in our first four games. … If (officials) want to call it extremely tight, we have to do a better job adjusting.”
Leon Duplessis complemented Heleker’s 20-point output with 14 points and three 3-pointers for the Vikings.
Ty Stoddard paced the Timberwolves with 16 points and 10 rebounds, and Nick Fromm contributed with 13 points and five rebounds. Stoddard led his team with three 3-pointers.