Coeur d’Alene hangs on to defeat Highland

NAMPA, Idaho – The final score doesn’t justly show how well the Coeur d’Alene High boys basketball team played to be in position to win Friday, nor how feebly it played when it should have put Highland away.

For the second day in a row, Coeur d’Alene had difficulty finishing. The Vikings were thankful that they had enough cushion to survive a precarious final 5 minutes.

Coeur d’Alene allowed a 20-point lead to shrivel to four before the Vikings withstood Highland of Pocatello 73-66 in a State 5A tournament loser-out game at the Idaho Center.

The Vikings (19-5) will play for the consolation title (fourth place) this morning at 8:30 PST against Vallivue of Caldwell (18-5) at Caldwell High School. Believe it or not, Vallivue High was the predetermined site of the 5A consolation games. But the Idaho High School Activities Association changed the site so Vallivue wouldn’t have home-court advantage.

Vallivue rallied for a 66-60 win over Lewiston in the other elimination game.

CdA 73, Highland 66: The Vikings seemingly had the game locked up when they used a 19-1 run the final 6 minutes of the third quarter to build a 57-37 lead.

If that wasn’t convincing enough, a layup by Calvin Peterson off a nice feed in transition from Andrew Prohaska put the score at 59-39 in CdA’s favor with 6:04 remaining in the game.

Highland apparently didn’t think the game was over, and the a frantic ending ensued for the Vikings.

The Vikings assisted Highland quite a bit. CdA committed several unnecessary fouls and took too many ill-advised shots. It appeared CdA was the team playing from behind, not the Rams.

All of a sudden a 12-0 spurt that allowed the Vikings to take a 36-30 lead at halftime and was a springboard to the characteristic play that was responsible for their previous 18 wins was a distant memory.

“I told the kids that from the 3-minute mark of the second quarter until the end of the third quarter we outscored them 34-7 (actually 33-7) and played some of our best basketball of the year,” CdA coach Kent Leiss said. “And then we played quite possibly the most ridiculous 8 minutes I’ve ever seen in my life. I just think they got that lead and thought it was time for open gym and it was everybody’s turn to get a bucket. It kind of unraveled on them. That was really bad.”

A 14-4 stretch allowed the Rams to pull within 63-53 with 3:26 to play.

For a moment, it looked like the Vikings were going to stop the bleeding when Nate Bligh completed a three-point play. He made a double-clutch basket off a drive from the wing and added the foul shot to extend the lead to 66-53 with 3:05 left off a play Leiss had set up during a timeout.

But things got worse.

The Rams (12-14) converted two CdA turnovers into baskets. Derek Hartman got behind the Vikings’ defense for a layup that cut the lead to 66-62 at the 1:24 mark.

That’s as close as Highland would get, but the Vikings had to make 7 of 12 free throws in the final 1:16 to give themselves the slimmest breathing margin.

“We called two or three timeouts to talk about it, but it never seemed to do any good,” Leiss said. “I told them during a timeout that ‘We’re not behind by 10 with 2 minutes’ (to go). (I said), ‘We’re ahead, we have a lead.’ That’s all I really want to say or otherwise I won’t say anything really nice.”

Leiss thought the key to CdA separating from Highland early in the second half was defense and depth.

“I was rotating four in four out, four in four out. I thought our defensive pressure got to them,” Leiss said. “I thought they got tired. In the third quarter they missed a lot of shots in a row. Our defensive pressure and our depth wore them down. But then we made it ridiculously hard on (ourselves) in the fourth quarter with poor shot selection and poor decision making.”

Bligh, who had 25 points in CdA’s state opener, had a career-high 35 points. He made 12 of 18 shots from the field.

He continued to have problems with a cut on his lower back. After wearing three different uniform tops on Thursday (including his own, No. 22), he started the game wearing No. 40. At halftime he switched to No. 32. He said he got the cut in the Region I championship game and he aggravated it Thursday.

Perhaps he should wear a couple of different tops today.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Bligh said, smiling. “It’s this floor burn that made my skin raw. It got re-opened. I keep putting Band-Aids on it, but they keep falling off.”

Bligh agreed that the Vikings’ play early in the second half was as well as they’ve played all year. But they made things too difficult for themselves in the final period.

“We got out of control and we took some shots that we shouldn’t have. I know I took some shots that I shouldn’t have taken,” Bligh said. “We just got too comfortable with the lead. We got back in it at the end and pulled it out.”

Prohaska had 14 points, five steals, four rebounds and three assists. Peterson added 10 points and six rebounds.

“I definitely wanted to come out and play a lot better because last night I didn’t help our team out at all,” Prohaska said.

Vallivue 66, Lewiston 60: The Bengals built as much as an eight-point lead in the third quarter before the Falcons chipped away.

In the fourth quarter, the Bengals went cold from the perimeter and Vallivue took advantage, building a 59-52 lead with 1:49 to go. Lewiston had to start fouling and the Falcons made their free throws.

Will Bogan led Vallivue with a game-high 25 points.

“Bogan just took over,” Lewiston coach Dave Cornelia said. “He had a stretch there where we had trouble guarding him. He’s so quick off the dribble. He can take you to the rim or he can step back and hit 3s. That was pretty much the difference.”

Shad Strerath led Lewiston (17-7) with 17 points. Andrew Packwood had 16 and Shane Moser added 13.