LOWER LAKE — Max Huff did the damage in the first half before passing the baton to teammate Dustin Thaxton in the second Thursday night as the Kelseyville Knights wrapped up a 20-win regular season with a 61-47 victory over the Lower Lake Trojans at Lower Lake.
Kelseyville”s win combined with Middletown”s title-clinching 75-46 victory against Clear Lake on Thursday means that the Knights finish their North Central League I campaign at 11-3 and in no worse than a tie for second place (St. Helena is 10-3 with one game left). Kelseyville is 20-6 overall.
Lower Lake ends up 3-11 in league play and 3-21 overall. All three of the Trojans wins came in their final six games.
“I”m really proud of the way my kids did not put their heads down,” Lower Lake first-year coach David Graham said. “I”m learning and I”ll take the offseason to evaluate what I need to do to be a better coach. It was a season of highs and lows, but I”ve got a lot of juniors on this team and hopefully we can learn from it.”
Kelseyville coach Scott Conrad”s squad is most definitely a team of seniors — nine out of 13 — and the Knights played like a veteran club in 2011-12. Their next stop, hopefully, is the North Coast Section Division IV playoffs, but Conrad won”t know for sure until the at-large and seeding meeting takes place Sunday in San Ramon.
“We”ll do the waiting game and see what happens,” Conrad said. “I”m thinking 20 wins will get us in but you never know. I think they (kids) deserve it. We had a great year. We wanted to win league and win 20 games. We came up a little bit short in the league race, but it was a good year overall.”
Thaxton (24 points) and Huff (17 points, 20 rebounds) took their turns hurting Lower Lake, according to Graham.
“Huff pretty much had all his points in the first half and Thaxton had most of his in the second half,” Graham said.
Thaxton had only five points at the half, including one 3-pointer. He added five more 3-pointers — and 19 points overall — over the final two quarters.
A 21-12 third quarter pushed Kelseyville”s lead to 46-30.
Jeff Davis scored 18 points for Lower Lake while teammates Jesse Meldrum and Robin Chen added nine apiece.
