With the clock winding down, the Kangs tossed to their go-to guy.

Griffin Barker sidestepped Juanita’s Ryan Trautmann, put a shoulder into Cameron Knowles, dribbled behind Jayson Schroeder and challenged Ravi Regan-Hughes at the rim.

Buckets.

Go-ahead bucket from sophomore Griffin Barker. pic.twitter.com/T8oqAKuxkf

— John William Howard (@JowardHoward) January 25, 2017

Barker’s layup put the Lake Washington High boys basketball team in the lead and the Kangs held on to win a conference thriller over Juanita, 61-58, on Tuesday at Lake Washington High School.

“I knew it was going to be down to the wire,” Kang senior Jordan Richter said. “It was a dogfight the whole game, but we were definitely hoping for a better outcome in the second half. Pick it up and get a 10-0 lead on them.”

Lake Washington (6-6 KingCo, 8-6) led by two at halftime, but it was a hard-fought pair. Juanita led after the first quarter and tied the game at 28 late in the second period on a corner three from Regan-Hughes.

Juanita (5-7, 8-10) took a lead in the third period, but Lake Washington answered with a three from Richter to tie the game at 38 and a behind-the-head pass from Richter to senior Sam Linsky for a 42-40 lead late in the quarter.

Richter and Linsky both finished with 17 points and both played a hand in clutch shots down the stretch as Richter and junior Dalton Liesse hit from long range late in the fourth quarter to cut into a six-point Juanita lead.

“I think the stretch that killed us was that there were three times where we scored twos, but gave up consecutive threes,” Juanita coach Sloan Strohl said. “You’re scoring, but your lead’s going down. The kids had a tough time dealing with that, but they hit a couple tough threes with hands in their face and sometimes that’s just how it goes.”

Both Juanita and Lake Washington have qualified for the conference tournament, which includes the top five Class 3A teams. All that is left to be determined is the seeding. Lake Washington can finish as high as third, and Juanita as high as fourth.

Lake Washington had won four of five games before dropping games to Bellevue and Liberty on back-to-back nights last week.

“After going 0-2, our chemistry dropped down a little bit and everyone started getting a little bit sad or depressed,” Richter said. “Coming into this game, me, Sam [Linsky] and Brandon [Gockel], the three seniors, we knew we needed to turn it up and get this W for our team or we would have gone into more turmoil than we were in.”

The Kangs have Redmond at 7:30 p.m. on Friday at Redmond High School before playing Mercer Island in the regular season finale on Jan. 31.

“I think we understand that we’re not playing how we need to play and not playing our best basketball,” Lake Washington coach Ryan Staudacher said. “In some of those earlier wins, like the win on Mercer Island … we’ve shown that we can play at another level, and we’ve just got to be more consistent and focused when we’re on the floor. I’m hoping we can find that stride in the next week or so as we head into the tournament.”

Juanita would need Redmond to lose both of its remaining games for a chance to move up in the seeding, but the Rebels are guaranteed a spot in the loser-out game on Feb. 3. Like Lake Washington, the Kangs have been on a bit of a roll, winning four of five before dropping the game on Jan. 24.

“We can hang our heads for one night, but at the end of the day, we’re still playing for a spot in KingCos,” said Regan-Hughes, who led all scorers with 24 points and grabbed a game-high nine rebounds. “We’re still playing for a spot in the tournament, so we need to keep working. Hopefully, we’ll see them again.”

Schroeder finished with nine points, and Knowles and Brighton Maughan both had eight for Juanita.

Barker finished with 12 points and six boards for Lake Washington. Liesse had 10 points.