LEWISTON, Idaho – The Activity Center at Lewis-Clark State College is too small for an indoor track facility, despite what the Warrior men's basketball team may think.
 
Forcing several turnovers in the first half, the Warriors then were off to the race and basically ran the University of Great Falls out of the gym in a 90-58 Frontier Conference win on Saturday night.
 
LCSC led 12-11 roughly five minutes into the contest, but then used runs of 12 and 11 straight points to go on a 32-9 run for a 44-20 lead. Of the 44 points, 19 came off of Great Falls turnovers as LCSC converted the turnovers into several fastbreak opportunities and easy layins.
 
"Right out of the gates our guys had great energy and focus," LCSC coach Brandon Rinta said. "That was a nice run there."
 
Great Falls trailed 51-30 at halftime and never got closer than 20 in the second half. The Warriors wound up forcing 17 turnovers, which led to a 25-5 advantage in points off of turnovers and a 15-2 advantage in fastbreak points.
 
"Great Falls is such a great defensive team that you have to take care of the basketball, and we did that is what we did tonight," Rinta said. "To only have six turnovers against a team that likes to pressure like that, and only giving them six offensive rebounds, that was the difference tonight."
 
The win moved LCSC to 20-7 overall and 10-5 in league play, just a game behind Montana Western for second place in the standings. Great Falls is now 11-14 overall and 3-11 in league play.
 
It is the fifth consecutive season the Warriors have won at least 20 games under Rinta, which is a program best. LCSC has had only 14 20-win seasons in program history, but 11 have come in the last 16 years.
 
"I think we have had a lot of good players, especially with this team," Rinta said of the five straight seasons with 20 wins. "I give these players a lot of credit. They have faced some adversity and we've had our ups and down, but these guys keep believing in each other, and as long as you keep doing that, good things are going to happen. We've been able to click here when it matters most."
 
The Warriors had a lot of things clicking on Saturday night, including junior David Shedrick, who scored a season-high 17 points. He also had four rebounds, two assists and blocked two shots.
 
"I liked David's energy out there," Rinta said. "He was making shots. Defensively he was being really physically."
 
The Warriors had a number of solid efforts as all 10 players had at least two points in the contest. Trea Thomas added 17 points and two assists, Doug McDaniel had 13 points, six boards, three steals, and two assists, and Anthony Sullen had 11 points, three assists, and two steals.
 
"I like what we did across the board," Rinta said. "I like that we had 20 assists and I thought our guys did a great job of rebounding."
 
For the game, LCSC was 35-of-71 from the field for 49.3 percent, and 9-of-32 from the 3-point line for 28.1 percent. Great Falls was 24-of-54 for 44.4 percent and 5-of-15 from the 3-point line for 33.3 percent. LCSC also had a 39-32 rebounding advantage over the taller Argonauts. McDaniel and Zavon Jackson had six rebounds apiece to pace LCSC.
 
At one point this season, the Warriors were 3-4 in league play, but have responded with seven wins in their last eight games.  The streak started when LCSC lost to both Montana Western and Rocky Mountain on the road and changed to a five-guard lineup. Now, LCSC is back on the road to face those two teams this week.
 
"This is a tough, tough road trip coming up, but it's the next challenge," Rinta said. "Our final three games have a lot of weight to them."
 
The top six teams in the conference standings advance to the conference tournament. In the first round, the top two seeds receive byes. If LCSC can beat Western on Thursday, the two teams would be tied for second place, but LCSC would have the tiebreaking edge based on beating the Bulldogs in two of their three meetings.
 
"It's huge," Rinta said of Thursday's game. "I know we don't control our destiny here as much as we would like to but still we have been in this situation before. We just have to take it one game at a time. Western handled us pretty well last time in Dillon and hopefully that will motivate our guys. It's going to be a big game."
 
Montana Western and LCSC will meet at 6:30 p.m., on Thursday and then LCSC travels to Billings to face Rocky Mountain, also at 6:30 p.m., next Saturday.
 
The Warriors then end the regular season at home against Carroll, which is in first place in the standings, on Feb. 25 at 7:30 p.m.