Islander boys improve to 5-0 in KingCo | Prep boys basketball

Published 11:32 am Sunday, January 11, 2015

Mercer Island boys basketball earned its second-straight league win since returning from holiday competition in California, beating Lake Washington 73-43 Friday night at Lake Washington High School. The Islanders improved to 5-0 in the KingCo standings.

Mercer Island coach Gavin Cree said after the win he was most proud to see an all-around complete effort from his team against the Kangs.

“We expect to play 32 minutes of intense defense and execute on offense, and I thought we probably got closer to that tonight than we have in any other game,” Cree said. “I thought we had a little bit of a lapse in the latter part of the first quarter and a little bit of a lapse in some of the third quarter, but I think it was our most complete game tonight. Even the guys who finished the game, the JV guys who finished, did a really nice job of bringing the intensity, and that was really good to see.”

Coming off a 56-49 win over Sammamish earlier in the week, Mercer Island (9-4, 5-0) was off and running early and never trailed, scoring the game’s first 12 points and led 18-10 after one. Lake Washington (4-9, 1-3) cut the deficit to six in the opening minutes of the second quarter, but that was as close as the Kangs would get. The Islanders responded with an 11-2 run, going into the half up 40-22 and never allowing the Kangs to come within 15 points the rest of the way. Gabriel Boucaud led Mercer Island in scoring with 12 points, while Emerson Schulz had 11 and Shain Scott had 10.

With two consecutive KingCo wins since returning from the California trip, Cree said he’s seen a higher intensity from his players, particularly coming out of halftime. But he said the Islanders would have to continue to improve if they were stay up in the KingCo standings.

“We’re not as young of a team as we were at the beginning of the year. We’ve got some games under our belt, we have some experience, so we can’t really use that as an excuse for much longer,” Cree said. “We just have to keep getting better. Our goal is to be the best that we can be at the end of the season.”