Lakes 55, Carmel 44

It started with a blocked shot that was so emphatic that it hurled straight into the Lakes student section.

And to think that Kevin Guirand was just warming up.

For the next 29 minutes against visiting Carmel on Friday, the Lakes senior forward continued to stay active on defense while also being a load in the paint and dominating the boards.

"I was just trying to have fun out there," said the 6-foot-1 Guirand, who seemed to be having a ball, despite the fact that he was playing with a nagging toe injury.

Guirand finished with a team-high 14 points and 12 rebounds to help Lakes get past Carmel 55-44 in a nonconference game that was not nearly as close as the final score would suggest.

Lakes surged to a 15-4 first quarter lead and stayed firmly in command the rest of the way. In fact, the Eagles were up by 19 points with just under two minutes to play, but Carmel scored the final 8 points to significantly cut down the final margin.

With the victory, Lakes moves to 2-4 while Carmel drops to 2-7.

"Well, it's a win. It wasn't pretty, but it's a win," said Lakes coach Brian Phelan, who also got double figures from Trey Williams (13 points) and Dan Kalb (10). "Carmel did a good job of getting us out of our rhythm. But we were able to get the ball inside to Kevin and he still had a good game even though his toe injury kind of slowed him up a bit.

"We also did a nice job defensively. We just put a new defense in yesterday and the kids responded."

Indeed they did. With their frenzied pressure defense, the Eagles forced Carmel into 18 turnovers. The Corsairs, who got a game-high 16 points from 6-foot-6 center Jack Baucus and 10 points apiece from David Venegoni and Ryan Kloss, also connected on only 33 percent of their shots from the field.

"We just got outplayed and they took it to us," Carmel coach Jon Baffico said. "We had to play catch-up because we came out flat and it seemed like they came out with everything working."

Guirand was working so well for Lakes that Baffico had to stray from his game plan to try to stop him. But switching the strong-as-an-ox Venegoni onto Guirand didn't seem to help all that much, either.

Venegoni is used to defending guards.

"He was a big, strong, quick kid," Venegoni said of Guirand. "He was tough to stop."

Guirand originally was guarded by Dan Meegan, who is one of Carmel's best defenders. But Meegan was slowed by a knee injury suffered in the previous game and also found it difficult to keep up with Guirand.

"It was weird when I had to go up against (Venegoni) because I'm used to going against big, tall players," Guirand said. "But (Venegoni) is a really good athlete and he was stronger. I really had to work to keep sealing him off with my hips.

"It was a challenge for me, but I liked (the challenge)."