Medical Lake girls get help from the usual cast to stay unbeaten

The usual cast of characters made the contributions they were expected to provide for the Medical Lake girls basketball team last week.

That equaled perfection for the Cardinals who improved to 1-0 in Northeast A League play and 4-0 overall. ML wins came 46-43 over Davenport in a nonleague game, 67-25 over Riverside in their NEA opener and 56-32 in Rathdrum against Lakeland in another nonleague outing.

Medical Lake played Dec. 12 at home against Chewelah (0-0, 1-0), hosted Kellogg on Dec. 13 and will be at Deer Park (1-0, 2-1) Friday, Dec. 15 at 7:30 to close out the 2017 portion of the season, resuming play Jan. 2.

Makayla Geiger scored 16 points and Jaxyn Farmen 15 to lead the Cards against Davenport. Medical Lake held a 37-27 lead before the Gorillas staged a fourth-quarter rally that made things interesting.

"The good strength of this team is we have many different girls who can score," head coach Kyle Lundberg said. "Pretty much all can shoot and put up numbers."

The normally offensive-minded Jayda Noble scored just two points against Davenport. But that was less defense and more Noble herself who got into early foul trouble and had to ride the bench for a great deal of the game, Lundberg said.

Noble was back in form, scoring 20 at Riverside on Dec. 8. Geiger added 19 points with Farmen and Lexi Redell at 10 each.

"It's very difficult for teams to defend us," Lundberg said. "We also have very unselfish girls, we look for not just good shots, but great shots."

Along with a solid offense versus Riverside, Medical Lake played stingy defense, limiting the Rams to single digit scoring every quarter, including just three points in the opening eight minutes.

"When we can play great team defense and create turnovers, that's when we really get moving and things click very well for us," Lundberg said.

Lundberg said, however, there was room for improvement.

"Our defense is something we still need to get better at," Lundberg said. "It's one of our main focuses in practice to get better at the defensive side."

Geiger's 14 points were tops for the Cardinals in their trip to Idaho versus the Hawks.

Lakeland is a school with 850 students, 350 more than Medical Lake. The only important numbers were on the scoreboard where the Cardinals jumped off to a 13-2 first quarter lead and kept up the pace most of the rest of the way.

Noble and Redell each had 13 points to round out the Cardinals in double-figures. Seven of Noble's points came at the free throw line where she went 7 of 8. Jaycee Oliver was a perfect 5 for 5.

As Medical Lake wraps up the 2017 portion of the schedule and looks forward to the Christmas break, their focus is getting and staying healthy for a grueling month of January with 11 games.

"We are trying to stay healthy and get through these last games before Christmas break for some much needed rest and get some of our injured girls back ready for the second half of the season," Lundberg said.

One of the players he's looking forward to finally seeing on the court is Jessie Lohman, a transfer from Spokane who has been dealing with some foot issues.

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.