The Lakeside Warriors got off to the best possible start in their own tournament, with the Warrior men blowing out the Haynesville Golden Tornado and the Lady Warriors hitting a game winner with just three seconds remaining to edge North Webster.
In the boys game, the Warriors controlled the game from the tip, topping the Tornado by a score of 87-60.
“Offensively, we came out and played pretty well,” Warrior head coach Jason Gould said. “We’re scoring a lot of points. Defensively, I thought we could have played better. We’re fouling too much right now.”
The Warriors were leading 46-32 at the half, when they turned up the pressure on defense to put this one to bed in the third quarter.
By the end of the third quarter the Warriors had a 72-41 lead.
“I thought we came out with some defensive intensity in the second half,” Gould said. “That made all the difference as we were able to put the game out of reach in the third quarter and rest some of our guys for tomorrow night.”
Davion Whiting led the Warriors with a 19 point performance highlighted by five three-pointers. Jamarion Teal poured in 16 points for Lakeside and Monte Willis added 10 points.
Lakeside’s next tournament game will be at 7 p.m. versus Haughton in the semi-finals.
The Lady Warrior game was much more dramatic with the Lady Warriors winning 47-45.
Coach Tavasha Anderson’s team had the lead in the fourth quarter of this game, then North Webster stormed back to regain the lead only to see Lakeside erase that lead for the win in the final seconds.
After coming back to tie the game with under a minute to play, North Webster had the ball with about 10 seconds left on the clock. Just when it appeared North Webster would either win or send the game to overtime, the Lady
Warriors came up with a steal and pushed the ball ahead to a wide open Lady Warrior who hit the layup for the win.
“We started off slow tonight on defense,” Anderson said. “We just couldn’t keep No. 25 for them out of the lane. Down the stretch we made the stops we needed when we needed them the most. I was proud of the girls.”
Freshman Nancy Silva led the team in scoring with 13 points, followed by senior Destine Joiner with 12 points, senior Cayla McKinsey with 11 points and freshman Jasmine Lewis with 11 points.
The Lady Warriors will play Minden tonight at 5:30.
