LAKEVILLE - Taking care of the ball and finishing around the basket are both important factors to the success for all basketball girls basketball teams. And over the last few ballgames, LaVille head basketball coach Nicholas Amor knew he needed to talk with his team and help them understand those facts. On Tuesday, Amor got to see the fruits of his squad's labor as the Lancers defeated Argos, 54-32, in a non-conference game at LaVille. "We really need to focus on taking care of the ball," said Amor. "Turnovers have hurt us these past couple of games and we needed to clean things up on the offensive end of the floor." Amor's club put together its best game of the season so far as the state's leading scorer and her Argos teammates came to town. LaVille heard a very clear message in several areas to pick up a quality victory. During the process, they held the state's leading scorer - Samantha Redinger - under her average (31 ppg), took care of the basketball and finished around the basket. Argos came in averaging 53.4 points per game. In fact all of eight victories for the Dragon basketball team have been when they have scored at least 53 points. Redlinger finished with 26 points. The Lancer defense became the fourth team to hold Argos to 32 points or less this season. The Dragons have now lost to all of those teams this season. "We have been playing good team defense as well as improving on our rebounding," explained Amor. "They all played really well. They played well defensively. They were locked in and every player did a good job of taking care of the ball.  That was our emphasis going into the game.  In the past couple of games, even the ones we won, we haven't taken care of the ball.  And we did a really good job. We saw the extra look, we made the extra pass and we finished and that's all I can ask for." LaVille finished with just eight turnovers, which is the lowest since 11 turnovers against Logansport back on December 9. While the Lancer defense was playing well, the offense was effective in finding a solution to the Argos zone defense. "Just finding the middle, when teams play in a zone like that, usually the middle is left open," analyzed Amor.   "It's tough to get the ball into the middle when you have that player in front of you.  Pass fakes and good things can happen when that ball goes to the middle and the girls saw that." One benefactor from LaVille's ball movement, finding the middle man, and then going down low was Jasmine Foster. Foster came off the bench to score a career-high 18 points and hauled down a career-high 8 rebounds. "Jasmine got after it," said Amor.  "Finally saw some just 'go' from Jasmine.  Just her pace. We've been talking to her about that, pick your play up and she just played with intensity.  She is a really good player when she's got that intensity and wants to get to the rim." When asked about her career night, Foster was quick to give credit to her teammates. "I feel like we all played well as a unit," said Foster.  "It wasn't just me. My teammates created good shots for me, so it wasn't just me. I was able to get into position to hit some shots and we were able to score as a unit tonight.  It's a big win for us, especially going into the rest of this week, then sectionals." After taking a 14-12 lead at the end of the first quarter, the Lancer defense went to work over the middle two quarters to turn a two-point lead into a 43-19 gap heading into the final eight minutes.  In fact, LHS limited Argos to just two field goals over 16 minutes and zero points in the third quarter. "Our defense just really stepped up tonight," said Amor.  "London and Mikalah did a really good job of playing defense on Redinger. Mikalah a majority of the game and then London stepped up when Mikalah was getting a little tired.  Reddinger has a knack for drawing a foul, there is no doubt about that.  And she probably gets 10 of her 31 points by going to the free throw line.  Toward the end, we kind of got her going to the free throw line a little bit.  But as far as playing straight up, both of them did a really good job." Foster played a big role in the middle quarters, scoring 13 of her team-high 18 points.  Brooke Edison had 8 points to go with 6 rebounds. Kwiatkowski also collected and had 3 assists. Lily Smith added 7 points and contributed 2 boards, 2 steals and 2 steals. LaVille improved to 8-11 overall and will play host to Knox on January 25.  It is scheduled as a varsity only contest and is set to tip at 6:30 p.m.  The final game of the 2023-24 regular season will be against Culver Community on January 27.  It will also be senior night  LAVILLE 54, ARGOS 32 At LaVille HS, Lakeville, IN. Score By Quarters Argos 12 19 19 32 LaVille 14 32 43 54 Argos - Samantha Redlinger 26, Alydiah Leed 0, Morgyn Barcus 2, Ellie Bollenbacher 4, Aleasia Sarver 0, Kinzlee Kelly 0, Lexi Gibson 0, Leah Pizzuto 0, Grace Thomas o. Totals: 10 11-16 32 LaVille - Lily Smith 7, Mackena Deason 4, Ava Weil 4, Brooke Edison 8, Mikalah Kuskye 2, Madi Singleton 3, Denni Markin 0, London Kwiatkowski 8, Jasmine Foster 18, Totals: 22 7-8 54 3-point field goals: Argos 1 (Redlinger), LaVille 3 (Smith, Deason, Singleton) JV score: LaVille 25 (Madi Singleton 10), Argos 17 (Kinzlee Kelly 13)