For three-and-a-half quarters of basketball, the Lake Washington High basketball team found itself playing from behind against the Mercer Island Islanders, trailing by as much as 15 in the second half..

But a double-digit deficit wasn’t enough to deter the Kangs from making one final, special push.

Nine fourth-quarter points from junior guard Beau Heimdahl and a late bucket from sophomore big man Griffin Barker Lake Washington capped a furious second-half rally as the Kangs edged Mercer Island, 61-60, for a conference victory on Friday night at Lake Washington High School.

Three players scored in double figures for Lake Washington. Heimdahl led the way with a game-high 18 points in a much-needed victory for the Kangs, who had lost three of their first four KingCo league games.

“The past couple of weeks, we’ve kind of just let down the energy,” Heimdahl said. “So we just started to keep our heads up and not care about the score, just play our game. We figured out that we need to make the extra pass and take it to the hole hard. If it’s not there, take a jump stop and kick it out. We finally got that at the end. We were making our buckets and played good defense. Griffin [made] the awesome bucket at the end to put us up by one and we kept that lead because of defense.”

Lake Washington (6-4, 2-3 in KingCo) claimed advantages only twice throughout the contest. A 3-pointer from Heimdahl with 3:23 to go in the first half gave the Kangs a 25-24 lead, their first of the game. Mercer Island (5-6, 4-2) quickly took back control off a basket from Shain Scott and finished the half on a 13-3 run to lead 37-28 at the break. The Islanders increased their advantage to 15 in the third quarter before Lake Washington closed the period with a 9-2 run of its own to trail Mercer Island 50-42.

Lake Washington coach Ryan Staudacher said he preached patience to his players for better execution on the offensive end.

“I just told them to keep battling one possession at a time,” Staudacher said. “We turned the ball over a whole bunch in the first half and gave up a lot of possessions and just kind of beat ourselves. I kept telling them, ‘If we clean that up, get some more shots on the offensive end and get some of those to start dropping, we’ll be right back in it.’ They just kept battling. They battled for each other and just never gave up. That’s just what this team needed.”

In the fourth, the Kangs whittled a 10-point deficit down to make it a one-point game on three separate occasions, with Heimdahl the offensive culprit each time, penetrating for layups through the Mercer Island defense. After Mercer Island couldn’t convert on a one-and-one opportunity, Barker sank what proved to be the difference-maker with 17 seconds left.

“He just battles,” Staudacher said of the sophomore post player. “I thought he did a good job of making the right decisions in the second half. When they were sending the double team or there was traffic, he was making the right pass. When they didn’t, he went one-on-one and scored.”

Barker finished with 15 points, while senior guard Sam Linsky added 12. Griffin Emanuels led Mercer Island with 15 points. Joe Gormley added 12 for the Islanders.

Next, Lake Washington hosts Sammamish at 8 p.m. Monday at Lake Washington High School. Mercer Island will take on Juanita at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Juanita High School.