Olathe ? It’s unfortunate a couple of postgame issues could damper a thrilling 46-44 win for the Lawrence High boys basketball team at Olathe South, but in the end, the Lions received a police escort to the locker room before making their trip back home.

“It was the kind of game you want to play – close,” Lions coach Chris Davis said as his players headed for the bus. “We fell behind, and you’ve got to fight back, and they did a nice job with negating our size advantage, and we did a good job then of reacting to that and finding a way to win.”

During the postgame handshakes, Olathe South coach John McFall passed by Daniel Green without a word or a handshake and went on congratulating the other LHS players. Green simply turned, stuck out his hand and asked, “Would you like to wish me a good game?”

He received no response, and that’s about the time heated words were exchanged between the players. Both teams were quickly separated, and O-South headed for the locker room.

Davis wanted his players to simply get on the bus, but his team still had things in the visiting locker room, and that’s when a police officer present at the game stepped in. Everything calmed down from there.

But before all of that, LHS showed some guts coming back from a 19-10 first-quarter deficit by holding Olathe South to four-second quarter points. The Lions sent the game into halftime with a 23-23 tie despite not making a single field goal following a Nick Wagner three-pointer at the 6:30 mark.

“Our team has a lot of heart, and we tend to wear it out there pretty far,” Davis said. “I really wasn’t too worried about their nine-point lead. It was early in the game, and they were playing very well, and we really weren’t hitting our stride, so I really wasn’t very concerned about it. But the boys do have an awful lot of heart, and it shows.”

The Lions’ offense was running well for the most part, led by Chance Riley, who had a game-high 18 points – half of them via three-pointers.

“They were doubling down and we just had open kick-outs,” Riley said. “And that’s what we do – kick-outs. So we were hitting them today.”

Although LHS had a couple of stretches where it wasn’t able to score, the important thing was the Lions weren’t turning the ball over. In the second and third quarters LHS had zero turnovers, and had just two in the closing period.

“That is pretty nice late in the game – especially with the pressure they were putting on us – that we would be able to handle that,” Davis said. “Credit Daniel Green and Dorian Green and Jace McNabb for handling the pressure and making sure the ball went where it needed to.”

Daniel Green gave Lawrence a one-point lead with four seconds remaining when he made one of two free throws. Then, with a half-second left on the clock, Nathan Padia knocked in his second free-throw attempt for the final margin.

The win came a night after the Lions defeated Shawnee Mission West, 61-53, at home.

“We kind of looked at this Friday and Saturday with Shawnee Mission West and Olathe South as it could be a real turning point for us,” said Davis, whose squad fell to Olathe South in last year’s Class 6A sub-state tournament. “And those are two really good, quality teams that we beat. So I’m really happy with our progress.”