The Lyle-Pacelli boys basketball team kept the ball moving as it cruised past Lanesboro 70-52 in Pacelli Gym Thursday night.

The Athletics racked up 17 assists on 29 field goals to beat the Burros’ zone and most of those field goals came off of clean looks near the rim for Braden Kocer, who had 18 points and 10 rebounds, and Noah Jiskra, who finished with 27 points, 11 rebounds and four assists.

“With the zone that they played, the coaches had a real good game plan for us to move it around and find the open spots,” Kocer said.

LP (3-2 overall, 3-1 SEC) jumped out to a 12-2 lead early on and the Burros never got closer than 11 in the second half. LP head coach Scott Koenigs said he watched film of LP’s game against Lanesboro last season and he noticed the Burros stayed in their zone the entire night, so he prepared his team to be ready attack the defense with ball movement.

“We worked a lot yesterday on working against that zone and I thought we did a great job of moving the basketball tonight. We found lanes and we got the baseline a couple of times,” Koenigs said. “Defensively, we’ve got some work to do. We gave up too many lay-ups and our help side defense wasn’t there, but overall I’m pretty pleased with the performance.”

Jiskra was able to get a lot of easy looks as Brady Lester, who had five assists, found him under the hoop for several lob passes. Jiskra said the Athletics are starting to find a flow and they’re playing together.

“This team is a family and we’re always looking out for each other,” he said. “We always have each other’s backs.”

LP had lost its last two games as it fell 70-31 to Spring Grove Monday and it lost 56-52 to Blooming Prairie Tuesday.

“Coming in we had two tough losses and we were not a happy basketball team,” Kocer said. “We wanted to come out and get a win.”

Lanesboro 28 24 — 52

LP 43 27 — 70

LP scoring: Noah Jiskra, 27; Braden Kocer, 18; Jordan Cotter, 9; Lee Bauer, 6; Trinity Anderson, 6; Patrick Murphy, 4; Brady Lester, 2; free throws: 60 percent (9-for-15)