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Pavlik, Lakeview ‘sock’ it to Howland
By Ryan Buck
HOWLAND
As her final basketball season in a Lakeview uniform commenced, senior point guard Abby Pavlik wanted to leave her mark on her team, socks included.
Thanks to Pavlik — the lone senior — and an emerging group of underclassmen, the neon spectrum of Kevin Durant-brand socks adorning each pair of Bulldog feet have Lakeview at 8-0 after a convincing 51-35 victory over Howland.
“My senior year I wanted to do with something different,” said Pavlik. “I wanted to make people go, ‘Whoa! That’s kind of cool.’ We all went to the Nike store and got different ‘KD’ socks in all different colors and I thought it looked pretty sweet.”
Pavlik scored 20 points and junior forward Addie Becker scored 15 while a tremendous second-half defensive effort — the Tigers scored just 14 points in the final 16 minutes — earned Lakeview a solid road win.
“We’ve been trying to mature as a team and when we work hard and force a turnover, we want to capitalize on that and I thought the girls did a very good job of that,” said Lakeview coach Adam Lewis. “We wanted to make them pay for turnovers.”
Holding a 24-21 lead coming out of halftime, the Bulldogs built an 11-4 run and pressured Howland into numerous errant shots and sloppy passes to take control of the game.
“I think the game was more about pride so going into the third and fourth quarters, we wanted to pull away and focus on our defense,” Pavlik said. “As a team we played defense very well and we were able to keep that lead strong.”
A Pavlik basket gave Lakeview a 30-25 lead and she then split a pair of foul shots on the Bulldogs’ next possession.
While Becker battled Howland forward Sara Price down low, she matched her counterpart on the offensive end. A hard-fought basket gave Lakeview a 33-29 before Pavlik buried a 3-pointer from the left wing for a 36-29 lead with 3:00 left in the third quarter.
“What she did today was what I expect out of Addie Becker,” Lewis said. “She works so hard every day. She’s going to get every rebound and keep scrapping.”
Becker then won a loose ball under the Howland basket and fed Jensen Silbaugh in the right corner for a 3-pointer with 2:10 left and Cammie Becker sank a last-second basket for a 41-29 lead as the third quarter ended.
“I was impressed with their defense tonight,” said Howland coach John Diehl. “They took Sara Price out of her game and Tori Rappach didn’t even score and Tori’s averaging about 16 points a game against some pretty good teams. They did a nice job defensively and I thought that was the main key to the game, plus we’d steal the ball and miss layups.”
The Tigers (7-2) threatened to cut Lakeview’s lead to single digits after a Price basket with 4:27 left in the game. But a Howland turnover and ensuing foul preceded a dizzying dribbling display and drive from Pavlik with 3:45 remaining extended the lead to 47-35.
“She’s really filled the role of a senior leader,” said Lewis, who coached her older sister Ali to a record-setting career which concluded last season. “She left it on the court today. She played hard. Our success falls on her shoulders right now. She’s done a very good job managing a young team.”
That includes their footwear.