Nathan Padia didn’t demand the basketball, but he didn’t have to beg for it, either.

“He was our first option,” Lawrence High boys coach Chris Davis said. “I wanted a senior at the line right then.”

Padia, a 6-foot-5 senior, nailed a pair of free throws with four seconds remaining to seal a 65-62 victory over Shawnee Mission Northwest on Friday night in the LHS gym.

The Lions seemed to have a comfortable 63-56 lead with 51 seconds remaining, but the advantage disappeared quickly, thanks to a pair of SM Northwest three-point baskets and a couple of Lawrence turnovers.

“When we had that seven-point lead,” Padia said, “our crowd was chanting, ‘Go home, Northwest,’ and I said, ‘Hey, this is a dangerous team.'”

The Cougars proved it with those clutch long-range three-point goals by Chase Mejia and Ryan Arel in the final 35 seconds.

“Those threes got us a little nervous,” Padia said.

In fact, SM Northwest had the ball with a chance to take the lead after Daniel Green failed to inbounds the ball to Padia with seven seconds remaining. However, the Cougars’ Jonas Varnum stepped out of bounds while driving the baseline with five seconds showing, and the Lions took over again.

This time they didn’t botch it.

“I told Daniel to get me the ball,” Padia said. “I told him I wanted the ball because I think I can hit ’em. It worked out pretty well.”

Moments after Padia drained the two free throws, SM Northwest’s Cooper Mach misfired on a three-pointer at the buzzer that would have knotted the score and forced overtime,

Thus the Lions (3-2) snapped a two-game losing streak.

In the final analysis, Lawrence High won at the free-throw line, cashing 14 of 20 charities while the Cougars made only 6 of 16.

“We’re a good free-throw shooting team,” Davis said. “We have a formula for making free throws in practice and we beat it every time.”

Another factor was the Lions’ ability to contain the Cougars’ Adam Marello in the second half. Marello, a 6-5 senior, scored 16 points in the first half, 10 on five stick-back baskets.

“We talked about keeping him off the boards before the game,” Davis said, “but we didn’t get it at first. So about our entire halftime speech was about blocking him out.”

Blocked out, Marello was blanked in the second half, mainly because of 6-4 senior John Novotny.

“It was a matter of putting the right guy on (Marello),” Davis said. “But all five of our guys paid attention to him because he demanded it.”

The Lions, who dropped a pair of games by a combined total of seven points in last weekend’s Blue Valley Shootout, also received a boost from John Schneider, a 6-7 junior who made his season debut.

Schneider, who missed the first four games with a sprained ankle, contributed 12 points and was the Lions’ third-leading scorer behind Chance Riley (18) and Padia (15).

“It was good to have all the pieces for the first time,” Davis said. “This was a perfect early game to get the kinks worked out. We found a way to win.”

The Lions will travel to Free State next Thursday night for their last game prior to the holiday break.