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Lakeview snaps Poland streak
AUSTINTOWN
Poland girls basketball coach Nick Blanch had one simple answer for Poland’s 42-34 loss to Lakeview at Austintown Fitch High Monday night.
“Our shooting percentage is what killed us,” the coach said of his team that made 15 of 67 field-goal attempts in the Division II district semifinal defeat that ended a 15-game win streak.
“We struggled shooting,” Blanch said. “The looks that we’d normally make all throughout the year, we struggled to make. The amount of putbacks and a lot of the 3s that we normally get, didn’t go for us.”
Meanwhile, top-seeded Lakeview (22-2) will play second-seeded Howland in the district championship game on Thursday at 7 p.m. Howland advanced by defeating Ravenna, 50-47.
In a late November meeting, Howland beat Lakeview in overtime, 65-60.
On Monday, Annie Pavlansky and Addie Becker — the only senior on both benches — had 13 and 12 points, respectively, for Lakeview, while Sarah Bury was Poland’s only double-digit scorer with 11.
From Blanch’s perspective, the loss was more about Poland’s deficiency than Lakeview’s superiority.
“They didn’t do anything, defensively, that killed us, offensively,” said the coach whose team ended 21-3. “We just flat-out missed shots. I’m not trying to be harsh towards Lakeview because they played a good game, but they just had more shots falling for them than we did.”
Lakeview hit 15 of 47 goals. At the foul line, Lakeview sank seven of 14, while Poland was two of four.
Two of Poland’s three losses were at the hands of Lakeview — the other being a 59-50 loss on Dec. 16 — while the third was a 60-52 loss to Howland on Dec. 19.
Lakeview coach Adam Lewis explained that his players weren’t going to let Poland’s Bella Gajdos do the same damage as the sophomore guard did against Lakeview on Jan. 30 when Poland won, 58-53.
“She scored 28 on us last time,” Lewis said. “We didn’t want to get 1-on-1 opportunities, so we brought help when she had the ball at the top, or switched into a zone as well — kind of a special defense just to limit her drives to the basket,” Lewis said of coverage on Gajdos, who had was held to six points.
Lakeview outscored Poland, 12-0, during a stretch of the first quarter.
“When we didn’t score is when we weren’t trusting our offense,” Lewis said. “We prepared a lot for this game and we knew that, in order to get the open looks, we’d have to share the ball.
“Anytime we score like that is because they [our Lakeview girls] trusted their offense and they ran it how they practiced it.”
Of Lakeview’s 34 rebounds, Becker had 14 and Pavlansky 10.
“When Poland beat us earlier in the year [Jan. 30], they out-rebounded us and that was kind of our big thing tonight,” Lewis said. “We wanted to control the glass as much as we could and be extremely mindful on both ends to get those rebounds. They did, however, do a nice job of eliminating any transition we had today.”
Although the game’s low foul count — including only five team fouls for Lakeview — worked in the winner’s favor, Lewis wouldn’t mind a few more calls.
“I’ll take it, but, at the same time, maybe we need to step up our aggression a little bit because you have seven [fouls] to use,” Lewis said. “We just got done playing Southeast and they run a similar, trapping defense and the only way to beat it is to swing the ball and attack the basket and I think our girls did a nice job of doing that tonight.”
Howland 50, Ravenna 47
Sara Price scored 28 points to lead the Tigers. Victoria Rappach scored 15.