Lake Linden-Hubbell’s Matthew Jokela works against the defense of Houghton’s Lane Laux during a game Monday at the Houghton Gym. (Daver Karnosky/Daily Mining Gazette)
HOUGHTON — Playing their sixth game of the season, the Houghton Gremlins boys basketball team, who opened their season with a gauntlet of tough opponents, faced yet another one on Monday in the Lake Linden-Hubbell Lakes. The Lakes are a team that Gremlins coach Jared Lawson has no doubt will be in the Division 4 regional championship discussion in February.
However, on Monday night, the story wasn’t about how the senior-laden Lakes dominated the younger Gremlins, but rather the other way around as Houghton earned a 70-31 win at the Houghton Gym.
Looking at the growth the Gremlins have shown from their season-opening loss on Nov. 27 to Monday, Houghton has already come a long way from a team that could not make a shot to save their life against the Jets.
“This group of kids is amazing,” said Lawson. “I don’t tell them you have to get in to get shots. There are multiple kids on that team that come in every single morning to get shots up and it shows. It starts to show when you’re doing that consistently all the time.
“More importantly, their willingness to listen for me to critique them, they’re feeding on this stuff, they’re taking it in, and then they’re going out on the floor and then executing what I’ve been telling them. For me, it’s amazing to watch the growth that they’ve had in just two weeks.”
It took Houghton 1:28 to figure out that they were about to be able to score. Junior Lane Laux hit a three, turning a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 Gremlins’ lead, and that was the closest the Lakers were the rest of the night.
Laux’s initial basket was part of a 14-point first quarter that saw junior Luke Hill score seven of Houghton’s next 12 points. Hill went on to score 33 on the night, draining six threes and making five layups as well.
“Luke (is) just feeling it,” Lawson said. “Again, that’s a kid who probably takes 500 shots every morning on those courts, so he is used to popping it.”
Equally tough to stop, especially in the second and third quarters, was Laux, who finished with 20 points. He scored 15 of those points in the middle 16 minutes, finishing with three 3-pointers on the night, including two in the second quarter.
Lawson was impressed by how his squad attacked the offensive side of the game, mixing in set plays with moments of simply getting the ball to the hot hands of Hill and Laux.
“The nice thing is we honestly don’t spend much time on offense,” said Lawson. “I really trust those guys. We just talk about balance, that they have taken (some) quick shots, try to balance it with some system offense, but, when you have a guy going like that, and feeling it, and who the hoop probably looks huge to him, you just keep feeding it.
“You just keep getting it (to them), and that’s what those guys did.”
While the offense was impressive throughout the night, on the flip side, it was Houghton’s zone defense that made life difficult for the Lakes, according to coach Brett Poissant.
“They were trapping off of that 2-3,” he said. “Taking away our main guys out of that kind of forced us to have our role players really step up, and just cold shooting tonight didn’t help that.”
Coming off some early-season success, Poissant felt that his team, which found itself behind 14-8 after eight minutes and then 36-10 at halftime, struggled with execution, something that had not plagued the Lakes in their first three games.
“(We) came into it after a good win, and I think we were riding high off of that win,” he said. “Their athleticism, their size, kind of overwhelmed us early on. We never really got out of the funk. We didn’t hit shots.
“It was just poor execution all the way around.”
Hill had 14 points by halftime, and the Gremlins kept pushing the ball his way in the third quarter, when he hit two big threes 37 seconds apart to put his team up 50-15. He followed that up with two more less than 20 seconds apart in the fourth quarter to put Houghton up 62-23.
Senior Gabe Popko did what he could to help the Lakes try to stay within striking distance with 11 points through the first three quarters, but it was not enough to spark the Lakes into mounting a comeback.
UP NEXT
The Lakes are back in action Thursday when they face Calumet at home. Opening tip is set for 7:15 p.m.
The Gremlins are also back in action Thursday when they travel to Hancock to face the Bulldogs. The game is scheduled to start at 7:15 p.m.
