Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Lake City 55 Meadow Creek Christian 47

By: Quinn Sweeney

The Lake City Tigers held off Meadow Creek Christian 55-47 to win their first game after a 12 day layoff. The Tigers started strong, opening up a 10-5 advantage six minutes into the game. The Saints answered with five quick points to knot the score at 10. Drew Swanson scored a basket and Austin Gilles converted an old-fashioned three point play to make it 15-10 Tigers at the midway mark of the first half. Two more baskets from Swanson gave the Tigers their largest lead of the first half, 19-13, with 6:38 remaining. The Saints countered with an 8-0 spurt to take their first lead of the ballgame with four minutes to go in the first half. A trey from Elliot Grimley and a bucket by Andrew Pyle helped give the Tigers a 25-24 lead at the break.

In the second half, two free throws by Zach Brusse, playing in his first game of the season after returning from an injury helped jumpstart a 9-0 scoring run by the Tigers. Overall, an 18-4 run over a six minute span gave Lake City its' largest lead of the game at 45-31 with 7:38 to go. The Saints answered with a 12-4 scoring spree to whittle the Tigers lead to 49-43 with 1:48 remaining in the contest. Travis Bremer converted all four of his free throw attempts in the final minute to help the Tigers seal the win.

Gilles recorded team highs in points (14), rebounds (10) and assists (3). He also grabbed two steals. Grimley netted 13 points and grabbed five steals, and Swanson scored nine points before fouling out with 6:00 to play in the game. Pyle played a solid game with eight points and five rebounds. Rounding out the scoring for the Tigers was Travis Heitman with five points, Bremer with four, and Brusse with two. Lake City out-rebounded the Saints 25-24, and recorded 13 steals as a team.

"We made harder work out of this one than we needed to, but coming off a 12 day layoff I expected that we might have some rough edges and we did. However we persevered behind solid team defense and a season high 48.6 percent on two-point field goals, 75 percent on three-point field goals, and 75 percent on free throws," commented Coach Sweeney following the Tigers second win of the year.

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