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Spartans adjust, put Yellow Jackets away

LAKELAND -- This was not a district game for Lakewood, so driving to the hoop for dunks, dribbling the ball past defenders to set up layups and wiggling through the lane for easy baskets wasn't going to work.

And it only took the Spartans 16 minutes to figure that out.

Blocked at every turn by a good Leesburg defense, the Spartans made a few halftime adjustments and dominated the final two quarters to advance to Saturday's Class 4A state championship.

The Spartans won by passing over and around the Leesburg press instead of trying to dribble through it.

Much more effective in the second half, guards Maurice Robinson and Kevin Dorsey were able to get the ball to the right people for layups and dunks as Lakewood outscored the Yellow Jackets 28-17.

"We were moving the ball up the court faster and looking for the pass instead of dribbling," forward Marcus Morrison said.

The Spartans also made another adjustment on offense: no one-on-one play, which Leesburg feasted on by continually batting balls out of the Lakewood players' hands.

"We had to change that," Morrison said. "We couldn't go all the way to the hole; we had to pull up and shoot."

Leesburg's upset hopes were extinguished when the Spartans opened the second half with a 12-1 run. Morrison had two layups and a dunk and brother Sean also laid in a basket as the offense started to click.

Once it did, Leesburg fell apart. Whether it was exhaustion, frustration or just better defense, the Yellow Jackets' shots stopped falling in the second half.

"We came out in the second half and kind of pulled back from the press," Lakewood coach Dan Wright said.

"We went with man-to-man and that gave us the ability to keep guys in front of us."

Leesburg went the first 4 minutes, 21 seconds of the third quarter without a basket.

The Yellow Jackets followed that by going the first 6:24 of the fourth quarter without a basket.

"If we had not been able to make the adjustments at the half," Wright said, "we would have been the team that was struggling."

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