Photo by Jake McNeill Lakeview guard Braylon Breyfogle drives toward the basket during the second half of a prep boys basketball game against Minneota on Friday in Cottonwood. The Lakers defeated the Vikings 58-51 to earn their third consecutive win.

COTTONWOOD — Despite falling behind at halftime due to a late Minneota rally, the Lakeview boys basketball team came out of the break reinvigorated to surge past the Vikings for a 58-51 win on Friday night.

Lakeview started the season 0-4, with three one-possession losses, but has now won three consecutive games and has the opportunity to get above .500 next weekend.

“It feels great, but I think we’ve got to keep playing hard. That’s who we are, we’re not big in size so we’ve got to play as hard as we can every game,” Lakeview guard Braylon Breyfogle said after the win.

The Lakers trailed 28-20 at halftime when Breyfogle scored the first points of the second half with a top-of-the-key 3-pointer. Carson Boe followed up with another 3 for the Lakers after a Minneota free throw, and Breyfogle steal turned into a Boe layup to tie the game at 29-29.

Boe and Breyfogle finished the night as the Lakers’ leading scorers. Boe racked up 14 points on 4 of 7 shooting while Breyfogle scored a team-high 15 points on 6 of 15 shooting. Boe also shot 2 of 4 from 3-point range while the rest of the team shot 2 of 10.

“We were all playing aggressive and fast, and I could just feel it when the game was going fast, so once I made a couple of shots, it just kept the confidence rolling,” Boe said. 

Dylan Caron kept the Lakeview momentum rolling with a go-ahead layup and a pair of free throws from Boe and a floater from Breyfogle extended the Laker lead to 5 points, 34-29.

Brody Larson finally ended Lakeview’s 14-1 run with a field goal of his own, but Jackson Staab answered with a layup through contact. He missed the and-1 free throw, but Boe grabbed the offensive rebound and eventually turned it into a Cody Helmke layup. 

“We just had to keep pressing hard on defense, keep our intensity up and keep the shots going,” Boe said of the team’s mentality leading into the deciding scoring run.

The Lakers’ hard press showed up on the stat sheet. Lakeview finished the night with 17 steals, including four each from Breyfogle, Landon Albertson and Tyden Marczak. Staab also had three steals in the game. 

“I think [Lakeview] sped us up a little bit and we made some poor choices in our passes. We made some bad passes,” Minneota head coach Chad Johnston said. “That’s credit to what they do, so I just told myself, ‘I don’t know how much worse we could play, and we’re still in that ballgame,’ so I guess that’s the positive. They gave me 100%, they’re working hard, we’ve just got to execute a little bit better and play smarter.”

The Lakers went on to lead by as many as 13 points when Breyfogle made a floater, Caron got a defensive strip and, after the Lakers set up in the halfcourt offense, Marczak drove down the baseline before making a pass through traffic to Caron in the corner to extend Lakeview’s lead to 46-33. 

Lakeview got off to a hot start in the game. After Larson scored the game’s first point at the free-throw line, Boe responded with a 3-pointer to give Lakeview the lead.

The Lakers slowly built that lead up to 18-11 with just over eight minutes remaining when a Lucas Rybinski layup, a Larson steal and a Tate Peterson fadeaway made it a one-possession game.

Trailing 20-15, the Vikings held Lakeview scoreless for the final 6:49 of the first half and went on a 13-0 run to take the lead into the locker room.

Rybinski hit one free throw and Lincoln Jerzak hit another pair to get the run started, and Tate Peterson tied the game up at 20-20 after eurostepping his way to a layup.

Easton Johnston went to the line and knocked down a pair of free throws to give Minneota a 22-20 advantage, its first lead since 1-0, and Jerzak hit a midrange jumper to make the score 24-20. A Rybinski transition layup and Hunter Carstensen got a steal and a pair of free throws to send Minneota into the locker room with an 8-point lead behind Jerzak’s 10-point first half.

“I think part of it was just we executed. In that first part of the game, we did not,” coach Johnston said of Minneota’s rally at the end of the first half. “We were not executing a press-breaker, we were not executing offense. We were turning the ball away, we were sloppy. Obviously it wasn’t a great shooting night for us, but wwe also got way less attempts than we’ve been averaging at this point in time.”

Minneota made 18 of its 34 2-point attempts, good for a 53% clip, but went just 1 of 18 from beyond the arc for a 5.6% rate. They also shot 19 of 52, or 37%, from the free-throw line. Lakeview, meanwhile, shot 47% from 2, 29% from 3 and went 19 of 46, or 41%, from the free-throw line.

Jerzak finished the night as the game’s leading scorer, finishing with 15 points on 6 of 15 shooting. Lucas Rybinski added another 15 points on 7 of 13 from the field while Larson, the only other Laker with multiple field goals, scored 5 points on 2 of 5 shooting.

Jerzak got in foul trouble for the Vikings late. With about 10 minutes remaining in the second half, he was substituted out of the game after picking up his fourth foul. He didn’t pick up a fifth after returning to the game but Minneota wasn’t able to make a run. 

The two teams were even in the rebounding battle, finishing with 34 rebounds each. Carstensen grabbed a game-high eight rebounds for Minneota, including four offensive boards to lead the Vikings to a 14-12 advantage on the offensive glass. For the Lakers, Staab led the way with seven rebounds while Marczak and Breyfogle recorded another six each. Trevor Tusberg also got four of his five rebounds on the offensive glass. 

Lakeview, now 3-4 on the season, will host Adrian-Ellsworth (2-4) and Benson (5-2) in a holiday tournament on Friday and Saturday. The Lakers will have the opportunity to get to .500 the first time this season when they take on the Dragons at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, while Saturday’s game against Benson is slated for 7:30 p.m.

Minneota drops down to .500 at 3-3 with the loss. The Vikings will look to avoid their third consecutive defeat when they take on Hills-Beaver Creek (2-0) at the SMSU holiday tournament on Dec. 30 at 2:30 p.m.