No. 5 Lake City takes down Bulldogs to avenge loss
COEUR d’ALENE — Coming into Friday night, Sandpoint was the only girls basketball team to beat Lake City this season.
The Timberwolves, ranked No. 5 in 5A remembered that overtime loss from three weeks ago, beating the Bulldogs, ranked second in 4A, 49-32 in nonleague play Friday night.
“After that last game, I thought they outworked us,” Lake City coach Bryan Kelly said. “We really took that to heart, and we came out and played hard.”
Whitney Meier hit three 3-pointers and led Lake City (6-1) with 11 points. Clarissa Smith added 10 points.
Olivia Maryon added eight points, but her biggest contribution was holding Sandpoint’s high-scoring junior, Madi Schoening, to 12 points on 5-of-14 shooting. Maryon also had four steals and four assists.
“Schoening’s an unreal player, and we tried to take her out as much as we can,” Kelly said. “Olivia Maryon did an amazing job on her tonight.”
Lake City led by as much as nine points in the first half. Sandpoint (5-2) came back and took a 24-23 lead early in the third quarter on a basket by Lily Martin. But Natalie Wheelock’s three-point play put Lake City back ahead, and the T-Wolves started to pull away from there.
Lake City made three 3s in the final 5 1/2 minutes of the third quarter, and Meier’s 3 to open the fourth expanded the lead to 42-28.
“We kept it close and we got ahead, and I don’t think we matched their intensity in that last quarter,” said Sandpoint coach Duane Ward, a longtime Bulldog coach in his first season back coaching the varsity girls. “We got a little tentative, and we quit attacking.”
Under Ward, Sandpoint is playing strictly a zone defense — which kept the Bulldogs close until Lake City, which also enjoyed a height advantage, got hot from behind the arc.
“They hadn’t proved to us that they could do that,” Ward said. “We were worried about the inside.”
“I thought we did a good job with our high/low, getting our posts some good looks,” Kelly said. “Whitney Meier’s been shooting the lights out, averaging about 18 points a game, and four 3-pointers. If teams go zone, that’s kind of nice to have.”
Sandpoint travels to Spokane to face East Valley today.
Sandpoint 6 14 8 4 — 32
Lake City 13 10 16 10 — 49
SANDPOINT — Williams 2, Schoening 12, Dumars 0, Converse 2, Robertson 0, Albertson 0, Ward 0, Martin 4, Couch 7, Kirscher 5, Bluemer 0.
LAKE CITY — Eborall 2, Dvorak 2, Carlson 0, Wheelock 2, Smith 10, O. Maryon 8, Rewers 6, Meier 11, Simpson 8.