LOWELLVILLE — Coming off just a handful of practices and, for many of the players, another long playoff run in football, it might not have been a surprise if the Springfield Tigers would have had some struggles Friday night against the Lowellville Rockets.

The Rockets feature a starting five with four players over 6-foot, which could have presented some matchup advantages.

But instead of succumbing to that height discrepancy, the Tigers set the pace early, climbed out to a big lead and withstood a late Lowellville rally to come away with an 81-65 victory in Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference Scarlet Division play.

“We wanted to come out, set the pace and play at a fast pace,” Springfield coach Steve French said. “We got some shots to fall early, which let us set up the press. The press was pretty effective. Our point guards did a really good job of pushing the pace in transition and got a lot of easy ones. Even if they made them, we came right back out and pushed the basketball down the court.”

Clay Medvec, Beau Brungard and Adam Wharry set the tone early with the three of them contributing 22 points as the Tigers built a 24-8 lead after one quarter.

“Balance is key,” French said. “Any team I coach, we try to be balanced offensively. The first game was RJ (Smith) and Alex (Rothwell). In this game, Clay hit a lot of shots, Beau looked really good going to the rim. He actually didn’t play in the first game. He was back attacking the rim.

“We have a lot of guys that can score the basketball. We just want to stay balanced and keep the other team’s defense guessing.”

Brungard led Springfield (2-0, 1-0) with 22 points. Medvac added 18 and Wharry finished with 14, as the Tigers shot 33-of-56 for the game.

Their play helped the Tigers build as much as a 27-point lead, 41-16, midway through the second quarter after a Mason Santangelo 3-pointer.

For Lowellville (1-1, 0-1), Anthony Lucente picked up two early fouls and had to sit the final seven minutes of the opening quarter, which hurt.

“The first quarter killed us,” Lowellville coach Matt Olson said. “You go down that many points, you’re chipping away the whole game. Against a good team like Springfield, you can’t go down by 16 points that early and expect to have a positive result.

“I thought they kept fighting and we won the second half, so I was proud of them in that aspect, but the first quarter killed us.”

Olson said he thought his team panicked in the first half because of Springfield’s pressure. The Tigers double-teamed both Lowellville guards, which forced the Rockets into numerous turnovers.

“They were getting out, getting breaks, and getting wide open shots,” Olson said. “We definitely wanted to take advantage of matchups and get the ball inside. When our guards aren’t taking care of the ball, it’s hard to get the ball down low.

“We were just throwing the ball away. We talked about and had some mismatches. You have to give Springfield credit. They did what they were supposed to.”

Springfield led 47-24 at the half, but Lowellville found some success after the Tigers slowed the game down to run their half-court defense.

The Rockets battled back enough to get the game within 13 midway through the fourth quarter after a Vinny Ballone bucket, but saw the Tigers tighten up to push the lead back out to 21 with under two minutes left in regulation.

“It just seemed like we were more composed in the second half,” Olson said. “We were finding the open man and finally hitting some shots.”

Ballone led Lowellville with 22 points. Cole Bunofsky added 13. Each finished with four assists.

“They had some good, big athletic kids,” French said. “They have a lot of good sophomores. This was a big game for us. We were taking this very seriously. The kids prepared really hard the last couple of days. We executed what we wanted to do. It was a good team effort.

“We’re still ironing out a lot of the kinks. The guys are mentally locked in and playing hard. If we continue to fine tune in practice, I think this could be a good group.”