Lakeland High School’s boys’ basketball team showed enough fight on the big stage at Norfolk Scope Arena to demonstrate that it belonged among the other teams, but it did not show it soon enough for a win against Tallwood High School on Monday.

The Cavaliers and the Lions battled for fifth place in the eight-team Scope Holiday Invitational Basketball Tournament, and the Lions claimed it with a 67-58 final score.

“I still think that we’re playing, again, in spurts,” Lakeland coach Clint Wright said. He later added, “We’re not pleased with our efforts on today, and we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

Their first half performance was the primary object of criticism.

“I feel like if we would have played the way we did in the second half, we would have won, by double digits, probably,” said Cavs senior Kenya Latham. “We’ve got to keep the intensity all game.”

Lakeland held onto a 16-15 lead entering the second quarter, then got out-scored 18-9 to trail 33-25 at halftime.

“It’s just amazing that from jump ball, things looked a little lethargic,” Wright said. “Again, I take full responsibility for not having them prepared, but I do feel that it’s a mental thing. I just think that the guys have got to want to play immediately and not wait until adversity or certain conditions result and then we decide that we’re going to play.”

One of the issues that plagued the Cavaliers was a departure from the interior play that has helped them get wins in the past. Instead, they hit early from three-point range and then stuck with that. They ended up shooting 29.2 percent for the game from beyond the arc.

“Actually, I intended, and shared with them pre-game, ‘Hey, we want to get to the cup,’” Wright said. “Every time we’ve shot 25 or more free throws, we’ve actually won the game, so my intent is to try and get to the cup.”

The coach said it was at the end of the third quarter when he first started to see a level of play closer to what he had been hoping for from his team all along.

The Cavaliers entered the final period with the same group of players on the floor, and Wright said, “I felt that fatigue set in then. We’re playing on a much a larger surface.”

He indicated the basketball court was college-size, meaning it is 94 feet long, a full 10 feet longer than high school courts.

He also said Tallwood “got very patient, which made us work extremely harder than the norm.”

Lakeland managed to produce 21 points in the fourth quarter, but the Lions, which entered the period with a 47-37 lead, nearly kept up, scoring 20.

Latham helped keep his team in the game with timely drives and free throws in the second half. He finished tied for the game high with 20 points and added five assists and five rebounds.

The Cavaliers played their second game of the tourney on Saturday, defeating Indian River High School 58-47. Junior forward Deonta Knight led the Cavs with 21 points and 17 rebounds.

Lakeland finished 1-2 at the Scope.

“I felt proud with the way we showed up, I just wish we had concluded a touch better,” Wright said.

The Cavs (5-5, 1-1) visit I.C. Norcom High School on Saturday.