Lakeview’s defense halts Salem

By Pete Mollica

CORTLAND — The Lakeview High boys basketball team couldn’t have picked a better time to have its best defensive game of the season.

The Bulldogs held Salem to just 13 first-half points Tuesday and rolled to a 59-44 victory that clinched the All-American Conference White Tier championship.

Lakeview (14-4, 6-1) never trailed from the opening tip on and led by as many as 22 points. They did it mostly with an aggressive man-to-man defense that forced the Quakers into 19 turnovers.

“That was probably the best defense we’ve play this year,” Lakeview High head coach George Lanterman said. “Give our seniors credit, and we’ve got eight of them, they all came out to play tonight.

“Salem beat us pretty good down there earlier this year and we didn’t play much defense so we’ve been working hard on almost all defense getting ready for this rematch and the work paid off tonight.”

“That’s a good Salem team and Will Klucinec does a great job with them,” Lanterman said. “They have a lot of good shooters that we were able to shut down tonight.”

“This win clinches the Red, White or Blue, I really haven’t figured that all out, title for us and that’s special,” Lanterman said. “This was only the third time in the school’s history that we have played Salem and they had won the first two meetings.”

Klucinec had nothing but praise for the Bulldogs.

“They just came out and kicked our butts right from the start,” Klucinec said. “They played great defense, rebounded well and shot the ball very well early and never let us in the game.”

“Who knows, down the road we might meet them again in the tournament, but right now we’ve got to settle down and finish out our schedule, which still has some tough games remaining,” Klucinec said.

Lakeview, which shot just under 50 percent for the game hitting on 21-of-43 shots from the field, put three players in double figures led by Robert Franks with 17 points, while Mike Graham added 11 and Justin Clark had 10.

The Quakers (10-7, 4-3) were led by Jordan Strabala with 12 points, six of which came in the final quarter (the only one that Salem outscored the Bulldogs).

Lakeview came out to start the game red hot, making its first three shots from the field, two of them 3-point goals and took a 9-0 lead.

The Bulldogs ended up making four 3-point shots in the quarter and took a quick 17-7 advantage.

While the Bulldogs slowed down in the second quarter, so did the Quakers, who outscored their opponent 10-6 and built a 27-13 lead at intermission.

Lakeview came out the second half and never missed a beat as they quickly opened with a 9-2 run and upped their lead to 36-15.

Graham and Franks had 11 of the Bulldogs 16 points in the quarter and their lead was 43-24.

The Quakers never really came to life until the final four minutes of the game.

Trailing 50-30 with 3:54 remaining, the Quakers came to life and had a 9-2 run with some clutch defensive plays, forcing the Bulldogs into three straight turnovers and narrowing the lead to 52-39.

But the Bulldogs came right back on two baskets by Franks and a pair of free throws by Justin Clark to quickly build the lead back to 19 points, 58-39 and the Quakers just ran out of time after that.

mollica@vindy.com