Staff photo / Neel Madhavan Lakeview’s Annabelle Humphrey (11) handles the ball while being defended by South Range’s Sophia Lucente (5) on Thursday night in Cortland.

CORTLAND — For a half, South Range gave Lakeview everything it could handle. But the Bulldogs’ depth eventually got the best of the Raiders on Thursday night.

Despite trailing for most of the first half, Lakeview’s relentless pressure defense wore South Range down in the second half, as the Bulldogs pulled away for a 67-48 victory to remain unbeaten to start the season.

“I feel like we were missing a lot of shots in the first half, and those shots set up our defense,” Lakeview coach Jason Lee said. “We really like to be a second-half team. I just told the girls, I don’t care if we’re down 20, we’re going to come back out the second half and put it on you because you’re tired. We’re playing nine girls. When you’re only rotating in five, that’s a big difference.”

The Raiders seized control early and led for most of the first half.

Sophia Lucente and Gwen Lowry combined for 17 of South Range’s 29 first-half points, as the Raiders maintained a one-point 29-28 lead at halftime. Lowry ended up leading South Range with 15 points, while Lucente finished with 13 and Keira Winner added 10.

South Range led by as much as eight in the second quarter. But in the final couple minutes before the break, Lakeview began to claw away at the deficit, even taking the lead at one point before the Raiders got back on top before the buzzer.

The second half, however, was a different story. Lakeview scored a pair of baskets to open the third quarter to take a lead it would not relinquish the rest of the night.

“They just did a really good job of doing what they do and getting us out of what we do,” South Range coach James Heath said. “We just kind of fell out of what we do. Foul trouble really hurt us. Needless to say, we’ve got things to work on. It’s a long season, we’ll pull together. I’ve got girls with grit, and we’ll be better because of this. We learned a lot tonight, and we won’t forget the things that we learned.”

The Bulldogs’ pressure resulted in a plethora of turnovers for the Raiders, which Lakeview either turned into drives to the basket or free throws. The Bulldogs went 23-for-34 from the charity stripe.

Lakeview outscored South Range 39-19 in the second half thanks to a balanced scoring effort. Kalyssa Werner led the Bulldogs with 14 points, while Annabelle Humphrey finished with 12. Sienna Terry and Paige Schwartz each added nine points, as Sophie Irwin had seven points and Mackenzie Stowe scored eight points in her first game back from a knee injury.

“We’ve had different high scorers here the last few games,” Lee said. “Tonight, they tried to take Sophie Irwin, who’s our sharpshooter from outside, away. And I love the fact that everybody else is stepping up. We all want to chip in, and when you look at that balanced scoring attack, you can take one person away, and we’ve got eight other people that are willing to put the ball in the hole, and that’s impressive.”

After shooting 40% from the floor in the first half, South Range shot just 22.6% in the second half.

Even though Lakeview only shot 37.5% in the second half, the Bulldogs were able to get a chunk of their offense at the free-throw line as they pulled away.

Lakeview improved to 4-0 to open the season, as the Bulldogs now have a week before their next game at home against Niles on Dec. 18.

South Range has no time to waste with three games over the next week, starting with Medina Highland on Saturday afternoon.

“We’re going to keep our heads up,” Heath said. “We understand it’s one game. We’ll learn from it, and we’ll get back on it. We don’t have time to hang our head and cry about things — we’re playing Saturday, then Monday and then next week, we got two conference games. We gotta become hungry again like we were our first two games.”