Ron Lee (Photo by Noah Clooten)
DEVILS LAKE — The new-look Lake Region State College men’s basketball team is off to a solid start in conference play.
The Royals (10-9), in their home conference opener Sunday, improved to 2-1 in the early going with a 75-66 win over Dakota College at Bottineau (13-5, 0-2). They came back from a 33-32 halftime deficit, fueled by second-half outbursts from Alvin Payne and Ron Lee.
“I thought we got off to a slow start. We let them dictate pace of play,” Royals head coach Jared Marshall said. “It was two differentiating styles out there; they’re trying to bleed clock and get shots under 10, and we’re trying to play fast… I really enjoyed how we came out and set the tone early in the second half.”
Ginuwine Tropnas led LRSC with 19 points and 10 rebounds. Payne had 17, and Lee had 15. Bronson Chambers shot three triples in the first half to give him 12 total points. The Royals were without Poet Davis, one of their top scorers, with a knee issue. They survived 16 three-balls from the Jacks, getting seven of their own and outrebounding Bottineau by 13.
Payne responded to a game-opening Bottineau three with his own triple. He had five of LRSC’s first seven points as it grabbed an early 7-6 lead.
But 12 of the next 15 points went to the Jacks, with four made threes.
A 7-0 run got the Royals within one. Chambers hit two long threes, while Tropnas slammed a dunk. Tropnas also tied it at 19-19.
“He went through a little bit of a lull after his injury, trying to come back,” Marshall said of Tropnas. “He came to talk to me about some different things, and we just had kind of a blunt, honest conversation about how he needs to be that guy all the time… He’s such a difference maker offensively, defensively and on the glass. He’s really just got it in his head, and he’s becoming a real leader out there. And the guys are responding.”
The teams went back and forth, and Bottineau led 33-32 at halftime. The Royals finished the first half with another long three by Chambers to get them within a point again.
“He’s our leading scorer,” Marshall said of Chambers, who entered Sunday averaging more than 14 points per game. “He just needs to continue to be that guy… When teams are starting to sag because he’s able to get downhill and to the hoop a lot, he’s gotta make them pay.”
The Royals completely took over the momentum at the start of the second half. They opened on a 12-0 run; Payne got his own rebound and scored, while Tropnas and Remy Davis Warington both hit threes. LRSC led 44-43.
Bottineau’s Cael Simpson quickly responded with two threes of his own. Chambers missed a pair of free throws, and another three for the Jacks rapidly cut LRSC’s lead to 46-42.
“It’s just kind of their style,” Marshall said of the Jacks, who were 16-of-40 from three overall. “They run a lot of sets, shoot a lot of threes… A few of them, we lost sight of some guys, and they got open looks, and a few of them were blown coverages on us. But I thought we did good. That’s just kind of how they play and what they want to do. And I thought we did a good job, overall, taking them out of stuff.”
Bottineau made it as close as 52-50. But after a timeout with 10:40 left, the Royals went on a 7-0 run and never relinquished their lead. Payne scored 12 points on six buckets in the second half, while Lee had 11 second-half points. Tropnas had another good half, too, with nine points.
“Alvin really played well down in Iowa, and then he’s been so big for us in the last couple games,” Marshall said. “Alvin has just been huge, filling that role. There’s not a lot of guys that can stay in front of him. And Ron’s a jet. I thought he was one of the few guys coming off the bench that brought energy for us today. I thought when he came into the game, you really felt it.”
Bottineau chipped and clawed at the lead down the stretch, squeezing an 11-point margin down to six points. But LRSC still led by multiple possessions with about a minute left and held on to win.
The Royals improved to 2-1 in Mon-Dak play after starting 0-1 with a tough overtime loss.
“We have a lot of different guys that can impact the game at any given time,” Marshall said. “We have a lot of different pieces, and tonight shows that we can have different guys step up. But the problem is it’s not consistent from one night to the next. We need to just be consistent night in and night out. And that’s how we can pull away in games like this. That’s how we can win big games, and that’s how we’re gonna be successful.”
