LAKEPORT — Look out world. Here comes Lower Lake.
Sweeping to a fourth straight victory, 69-46 over Middletown on Saturday night and a championship in the 14th annual Record-Bee Hoop Classic at Clear Lake gym, the Trojans appeared ready for whatever”s next on their 2007-08 season.
Lower Lake coach Marty Udy is counting on the momentum of the Classic to carry over.
“I think it”s gigantic. It really is,” Udy said of the Trojans” championship performance. “It”s just what we needed. You”re always trying to find ways to get momentum and put together a win streak and I think we”re getting better.”
Already, the Classic sweep has made quite a difference for Lower Lake, which came into the tournament with a 3-4 record and left with a 7-4 ledger.
How this will affect the rest of the Trojans” season, however, is anybody”s guess. Middletown used a 4-0 sweep to the title in 2005 as a springboard to a 20-win season and a league championship. But last season after repeating the 4-0 sweep the Mustangs went nowhere and actually ended up with a losing record for the season.
But the comparison may not be valid. Lower Lake is one of the most athletic teams in Lake County in recent years. With all five starters being seniors, the Trojans also have an edge in maturity.
Udy was heartened Saturday night by what he called “One of our best games this year.”
“Tonight, we had balanced scoring, we were focused and playing smart basketball,” he added. “It wasn”t Kevin (Freeman) carrying us on his back. The other guys stepped up and did a nice job continuing what we were doing.”
Eight players got into the scoring column and the Trojans maintained their level of play when their leader Freeman sat out the second quarter.
Freeman, voted the Classic MVP on Saturday night, concluded the tournament with 67 points, including 15 against the Mustangs.
The fact was that Lower Lake expected to stick it to the Mustangs, a team forced to count too much on one player — big, brawny and talented Tyler Hunt.
“We were trying to double down on Hunt and we did a good job,” Udy said.
Hunt, after scoring a tournament-high 33 against Upper Lake, was limited to 20 by the Trojans.
Middletown hung with the Trojans only through the first few minutes of the first quarter. By the end of the quarter, the Trojans led 16-8 and never looked back. They were up 33-21 at half and buried the Mustangs in the third quarter, outscoring them 23-8. With the lead at 63-37 midway through the last period, Udy mercifully rested Freeman for the remainder of the game.
“He had a great tournament,” Udy said of high-scoring forward. “I thought he came into his own in this tournament in all facets of the game, including leadership.”
Kelseyville 59, Clear Lake 52
In the final varsity game Saturday, Kelseyville”s Knights may have played second fiddle to Lower Lake in the 14th annual Record-Bee Hoop Classic, but they played it like a Stradivarius.
Falling just one field goal short of winning the Classic championship against the Trojans on Friday night (Lower Lake beat Kelseyville 42-40), the Knights wrapped up their tournament performance by coming back strong against the Hoop Classic hosts, defeating Clear Lake 59-52 on Saturday night.
Kelseyville coach Scott Conrad couldn”t have been happier than he was after the Knights finished the Classic with a 3-1 record, second only to Lower Lake.
“This is really a remarkable group of kids,” he said. “I”m really amazed how we bounced back after that emotional game last (Friday) night. We fought it through and had a lot of guys chip in.”
Although perhaps not as athletically gifted as Lower Lake, Kelseyville took a backseat to no one in playing consistent basketball. There were no lapses. The Knights were a hard-working aggregation who forced their opponents into mistakes with unrelenting defense. And they never did it better than in the second half against the Cardinals, who were minus starting point guard Jameson Holder.
The first half offered no clue to how Kelseyville would ultimately shutdown the Cardinals in a game that matched longtime archrivals.
There were, in fact, three lead exchanges and the game was tied three times before the Knights took a 28-26 lead at intermission. It would be tied once more at 30. Then, for Clear Lake, the roof caved in.
With the Knights leading 34-33 after a field goal by Clear Lake”s Ryan Richardson, Kelseyville mounted an 11-0 run that extended until the end of the third quarter.
It was not so much what the Knights did right during that push as what the Cardinals did wrong.
Suddenly error-prone, Clear Lake turned the ball over 13 times in the second half after committing only four turnovers in the first two quarters. Most of the Cardinals” turnovers during the time they were digging an inescapable hole for themselves appeared to be unforced. But most of them also came after Conrad inserted ballhawking Sal Martinez into the game, which the Knights” coach said had a lot to do with it.
“We just buckled down defensively,” Conrad said. “We didn”t make any extra Xs and Os at halftime. I think they (Clear Lake) are feeling like they threw some passes they should have caught, but Sal comes off the bench and does such a good job of getting in their passing lanes. He tips a lot of balls we don”t even see, but even the ones he doesn”t tip kind of puts the pressure on the receiver.”
Offensively, 6-foot-6 Isaac McQueen came up big once again for the Knights. A member of the All-Tournament team selected on Saturday night, McQueen led all scorers with 23 points.
“Clear Lake does a remarkable job of pressuring,” Conrad asserted. “But giving our big guy the ball out there and letting Isaac into the offense for us was kind of the difference in the game.”
Corey Dillon”s 20 points paced the Cardinals, Armando Martinez added 13 and Richardson, starting in place of Holder (illness), had 11.
