Posted: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 10:36 AM - 12,130 Readers

By: Danny Davis

After losing to David on Tuesday, Lake Travis closed out its week with a takedown of Goliath.

Drew Nikolovski scored 11 points and Luke Hutton added 10 to help lead Lake Travis to a 46-31 victory over Vista Ridge. The win over District 25-4A's top team comes three days after the Cavaliers lost a one-point game to Class 4A newcomer Rouse.

"We had to win this game," Lake Travis senior Billy Sherakas said. "It was real disappointing to lose to Rouse ... We worked very hard the last couple of days, we had good practices."

"After the loss to Rouse, we needed to step it up," junior Griffin Gilbert said. "We needed to buckle down, that was a bad loss."

Lake Travis missed its first five shots on Friday night but Nikolovski then scored the team's first five points, and the Cavaliers built a 24-11 lead by halftime .

Vista Ridge struggled mightily in the first half and the Rangers didn't get on the scoreboard until Brendan Minter scored off a Lake Travis turnover with 55 seconds left in the first quarter. Vista Ridge missed 16 of its 20 shots in the half and was 1 of 6 from the free-throw line.

"We just didn't step up and hit shots ," Vista Ridge post Cedric Hudson said. "After a while, it gets kind of frustrating when shot after shot aren't falling."

Vista Ridge scored only five points in the third quarter, and by the time the Rangers found an offensive heartbeat in the fourth quarter, Lake Travis had started to pull away. Hutton, a freshman point guard, hit six free throws in the game's final minutes to secure the victory.

Nikolovski and Hutton will highlight the box score this morning, but Lake Travis won Friday night's game with its defense.

The Cavaliers denied Vista Ridge access to the paint, and the Rangers were forced to take outside shots in an effort to get points.

The defensive scheme worked, as Vista Ridge's Joey Faglie, a 6-foot 3-inch post who scored 23 points in a Tuesday victory over Vandegrift, was held to six points.

As a team, Vista Ridge was 4 of 18 on its three-point attempts.

"We really emphasized this week, not letting them get down in the paint," Gilbert said. "If (Faglie) got close, our coaches would get mad at us."

Vista Ridge was led by Hudson's eight points.

*  Story Contributed by: Danny Davis