Topeka ? Chris Davis knows his Lawrence High boys basketball squad is going to “live by the three, die by the three.”

Sometimes, the Lions will do both.

LHS drilled 13 shots from beyond the arc Saturday at the Topeka Invitational Tournament. Yet, its inability to score from long range led to its demise.

A 1-for-16 yuckfest from three-point land in the opening quarter added another chapter in a growing saga of slow starts, and LHS never recovered, falling, 72-53, to Topeka West in a battle for fifth place on the Chargers’ home floor.

“That’s the peril of the type of offense that we play,” said Davis, whose club finished 1-2 in the eight-team field. “There’s really nothing broke. It’s just if we shoot the ball well or not – that’s all there is to it.”

The Topeka West defense certainly didn’t affect the game plan. After watching LHS senior Tyler Knight crack the 30-point barrier in back-to-back tournament games, Chargers coach Chad Eshbaugh instructed his squad to keep the ball out of the sharpshooter’s hands.

That meant plenty of good looks for everyone else. However, open rarely translated into success for the Lions (8-5), as Cameron Hershiser’s early three was followed by 15 consecutive misses from long distance.

Meanwhile, despite 22 turnovers, the Chargers (5-6) used deft ball movement to easily solve an assortment of trap defenses, becoming the fourth team in five games to crack the 70-point barrier against the Lions.

Three of those games have resulted in LHS losses.

“That’s been a problem for us all year. We don’t really know what to do,” Lawrence’s Kristian Pope said. “The first few don’t go in … your heart sinks when you don’t know what you’re going to do for the rest of the game when your game plan is to shoot threes.”

The Chargers’ Mekan Moss led all scorers with 27.

Knight finally broke free to score a team-high 19, and Hershiser scored 11 for LHS, which will close the regular season with seven straight Sunflower League contests, starting with a road trip Feb. 3 to Olathe East.

“We get those healing days to come back and put things together,” Pope said. “We’re not the kind of team that’s going to hang our heads and let this affect our entire season.”