Photo by Samantha Davis. Lakeview's Aleiah Rosenau analyzes the offense after receiving the ball near the lane in the first half against Ortonville Thursday evening in Cottonwood. Rosenau finished with 8 points and six rebounds in the Lakers' 83-33 win over the Trojans.

COTTONWOOD — The Lakeview girls basketball team made a statement from the jump through its fast-paced offense and full-court press to cruise to a dominant 83-33 win over Ortonville Thursday evening. It built up a 50-19 lead by halftime, forced the game to the running clock and never looked back.

Ortonville, still looking for its first win, couldn’t answer the Lakers’ press. Lakeview finished with 26 steals, which often turned into offense.

“It was a good night for us. We wanted to get off the quick start, get our press going, and then realize that we’re not going to press when it got to a certain point,” Lakeview head coach Mike Imes said. “We talked about coming into this game and wanting to play hard, but be respectful to the opponent, and play with integrity and class. I thought our kids did a great job of that.”

Brynn Stensrud finished with a team-high 19 points, going 3 for 3 at the perimeter. She also had three assists and four steals. Anah Schmidt followed with 15 points, and Brook Gunlogson tallied 9 points with a team-best five assists and seven steals.

Carmen Varpness led with 10 rebounds, and the Lakers gathered 48 in total.

The Lakers have been over .500 all season and continued to be resilient after losses. They have yet to drop back-to-back games, and have just four losses.

Lakeview entered Thursday coming off a hard fought battle in Clara City on Monday, falling to MACCRAY by a point, 57-56. Prior to that, the Lakers won eight of their last nine games, including a six-game win streak.

Aubreigh Rausch stole the ball off an inbound play in Ortonville’s territory at the low block and put it right up for a basket to start the Lakers off strong.

Lakeview started the game on a 19-2 run before the Trojans called their first timeout. The Lakers also held them to just the one field goal in the game’s first seven minutes.

Savanna Louwagie followed up Rausch’s bucket with a fast break layup as the Lakers set the tone early.

Stensrud hit a pair of 3-pointers and had six of Lakeview’s first 10 points, and she ended the first half with a game-high 16 points.

The Lakers were shooting well on all areas of the court, and spent a lot of time in the paint. If it wasn’t going up for fast break layups, Lakeview continued to look at passing the ball inside to its centers, primarily Schmidt, Varpness, and Aleiah Rosenau. Rosenau also finished with 8 points.

“That was an emphasis that we talked about practice yesterday, we really wanted to get the ball inside first and then kick it off for your 3s,” Imes said. “I thought our passing was pretty crisp … We did a good job of taking care of the ball and trying to get everybody involved.”

Lakeview finished the night shooting 39% from the field, 36% from 3 and made 13 of 19 free throw attempts.

The lead grew to 25-8 with a short jumper at the baseline from Stensrud, and a steal off the press from Rasuch who passed it to the other side of the court to find Stensrud for the layup.

Louwagie drove to the lane from the wing for a basket, and Megan Schwartz grabbed an offensive rebound putback to put the Lakers up 41-18 a few minutes later.

The half ended with a Stensrud steal, who fed it up to Reagan Bossuyt for another cohesive fast break play.

“Our girls were rotating very good tonight. We got to some passing lanes, got some easy baskets. I was happy with the way we executed our offense in the first half,” Imes said. “We had some set plays that we’ve been trying to run in the past, and we got them to execute tonight … I just thought we did a nice job of controlling the tempo, and again, just playing Laker basketball.”

Lakeview continued to play several rotations of players throughout the second half, which went to running clock. It also stopped playing in its press.

“We talked about, let’s not worry about what our score is. If you have a chance to get a fast break, [take it], but you can also pull it out, run some clock, and run an offense instead of just taking all these uncontested layups,” Imes said. “You don’t want to just walk through the second half … We were really focusing on just taking care of the ball.”

Jerica Selbo also got her first varsity points, another highlight in the win to which the Lakeview bench cheered for in support.

“That’s pretty cool, very happy for her [Selbo]. Great team effort,” Imes said. “Everybody got quality playing time. We got all of our bench in.”

The Lakers continued to collect numerous steals, and worked through its ball movement to have good offensive possessions.

The team flew through the rest of the game and didn’t allow Ortonville to come within reach at any point.

“What I liked about it, too, is our girls that had started and played were super energetic, even on the bench in the last five minutes,” Imes said. “Chanting for their teammates, it was just a great night.”

Lakeview improves to 11-4, and will next face a ranked opponent when it travels to Prinsburg to take on No. 10 Central Minnesota Christian (12-2) on Tuesday. Tip off is slated for 7:30 p.m.

“They are a very high quality team. We are a veteran club, and this is where you want to be heading into the playoffs — Playing these top teams,” Imes said. “We know going up there is always difficult, but we’re looking forward to the challenge.”