Laconia shut D4 No. 4 Lomira out for the final 5:02 of the game.
Stringing together defensive stops and clearing defensive rebounds helped the Spartans grind out a tough 54-45 Flyway road win on Tuesday night.
"Our conference is going to be a battle every single night," coach Dylan Wurtz said. "No different tonight. The ebbs and flows of the game, we had some good moments, some bad moments. We've got to learn from it, but you learn from great opponents and that's what we saw here tonight.
"We did just enough to win."
In the same stretch of the game, Laconia scored 8 points, all coming from different players, to ice away the win.
The Spartans (8-1 overall, 3-1 in Flyway) also went 4-for-4 from the free-throw line. Both Ethan Pinno and Nick Blank knocked down a pair.
Pinno, who finished with 12 points, said he is confident going to the line in pressure moments.
"It's the best when your team trusts you to go out there and put the game away, so it's definitely a big confidence booster for me," Pinno said.
Blank scored a team-high 15 points for the Spartans. It is the second time in three games that Blank has led in scoring.
Wurtz said he and his staff were discussing the consistency that Blank has brought to the table this year.
"We've said that Nick Blank hasn't played a bad game yet and that's hard to do," Wurtz said. "In high school sports, kids have bad games, they're 17 years old and it happens. Nick Blank has not.
"He does it in different ways sometimes, tonight was a little more scoring, it depends on the matchup."
The biggest possession of the night came with 2:25 left. Laconia was patient and drained an entire minute off the clock before Lomira's defense broke down and Spartan senior Sam Bartz got open at the rim for a layup. Bartz, who is working his way back from an early-season injury, had 8 points.
That left Lomira (7-1, 3-1) down 52-45 with just 1:24 to go.
The 8-0 run that Laconia finished on was the biggest run for either team in what was otherwise a tight game.
The dynamic of the game shifted dramatically with 2:19 left in the first half when Lomira junior Jake Broeske was injured going up for a fast-break layup and went down grabbing his right knee.
Broeske had 11 first-half points, but did not return to the game.
"When you see the guy, you really build both ends of the ball around out of the game, you certainly have to circle the wagons and do what you can to try to see what else you've got to go to, to compete against a team like Laconia," Lomira coach Dan Domask said. "That's not an average opponent. I thought our guys responded as far as effort and character how I hoped to see it."
Domask said there's uncertainty as to the severity of the injury and the team has to prepare that it might be without Broeske for a period of time.
Wurtz also said the dynamic changed once Broeske left.
"What a player," Wurtz said. "It's a different coverage [for us] when you've got 6-foot-9 in there. Wishing the best for him. I said our conference is great; it's great because of great players like him and wishing the best for him as he takes the journey back to recovery."
Lomira senior Jackson Goebel stepped up in Broeske's absence, scoring a game-high 16 and getting downhill much more in the second half.
Ten of those points came after Broeske's exit.
"With Jackson, I know I'm going to get a competitor," Domask said. "He cares. He legitimately does everything I want him to do as a player. His off the court prep, his communication, all of that is just top notch, so I'm not surprised he was able to rise to the occasion."
Laconia junior Cash Farrell was patient offensively, for he didn't score until early in the second half. Farrell finished with 9, while once again defending Lomira's best guard in Goebel and playing most of the game.
Farrell said he isn't fazed by the high minute load that he has been given.
"I've been doing this for a few years that I've been playing lots of minutes in games," Farrell said. "We run in practice, we do good conditioning, so it all pays off."
PHOTO GALLERY: Laconia at Lomira boys basketball - 1/7/2025
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