Vikings take charge

Not that Coeur d’Alene needed any more validation as Inland Empire League boys basketball front-runner, but it got some anyway Saturday in a 74-53 rout of visiting Lewiston.

Using a swarming man-to-man defense, the Vikings forced six first-quarter turnovers to set the tone, cruised to a 38-18 halftime lead and never looked back.

Senior guard Jon Latorre, admittedly not known for his offense, scored nine of his 15 points in that telling first quarter.

“We just wanted to come out strong,” Latorre said. “We’ve been working on defensive drills all week long, and we just wanted to come out and shut them down.”

After the beleaguered Bengals scored the first basket, the Vikings went on a 24-7 run until the 4:41 mark of the second quarter.

With the win, CdA (12-2, 6-0), ranked No. 1 in Idaho, remains in the driver’s seat for the league title and, if coach Kent Leiss has his way, possibly much more.

Leiss said much of what his team has been working on is in preparation for bigger games to come.

“We’ve been challenging the kids for the past week leading up to this game that we want to play as much man-to-man defense as we possibly can, and save the zone for games where we just absolutely have to have it,” Leiss said.

“So we’ve been working on our defensive principals of pressuring the ball and denying one pass away – just trying to really get after and fluster our opponent.”

Saturday night it seemed that all of that hard work paid off.

“I think our defense was outstanding tonight and I think our offense fed off of it,” Leiss said. “I thought it was a good performance and I think we’re only getting better.

“We’ve got six league games left and we want to try to win them all.”

Lewiston (8-6, 3-4), which suffered a heartbreaking home loss Friday after leading Lake City by nine to start the fourth quarter, had to take a four-hour bus ride north on Saturday.

But Bengals coach Dave Cornelia, who was whistled for just his second technical foul in 17 years of coaching in that same first quarter, wasn’t making any excuses.

“They just got off to a good start, and I didn’t like the way they were pressuring us, so I got an early ‘T,’ ” Cornelia said. “If they let them play that hard, those kids play there butts off.

“I’m not trying to take away anything from them, and I’m not complaining about the officiating because it didn’t cause us to lose – we just have to play better. The bottom line is that we have to handle that pressure.”

Vikings senior guard Andrew Prohaska led all scorers with 16 points. Junior wing Ryan Young’s 12 points paced Lewiston, which sat many of its starters in the second half after the game became a runaway.

As for his individual exploits, Latorre refrained from giving himself too big of a pat on the back.

“I’m not really a scorer, so that was one of the best scoring games I’ve had in a long time,” Latorre said. “I’m not known for my shooting, so maybe they were laying off me.”