ACCIDENT — Mountain Ridge head coach Tim Nightengale implored his team to force the issue after the opening quarter, and the players delivered.
Northern controlled the glass and kept Mountain Ridge out of the paint with its 2-3 zone early, leading 17-11 after the first and by as much as nine points. The Miners responded with a 17-3 run to open the second and outscored the Huskies 60-28 the rest of the way.
Led by Cam Breighner’s game-high 26 points, scored in two-and-a-half quarters before Nightengale pulled the starters, Mountain Ridge rolled to a 71-45 victory over Northern on Friday night at the Igloo.
“We started out really slow. This gym, sometimes you come up here and you play well and sometimes you don’t,” Nightengale said. “We really got into them and they responded. … Our defense picked up and that created offensive opportunities.
“Across the board, all of our kids played hard. They played their roles. We got a lot of good things from our 11 players that went in and played tonight.”
Mountain Ridge improved to 6-5 overall and evened its record in the Western Maryland Athletic Conference at 2-2. Northern fell to 5-8 (0-6 WestMAC) following its fifth straight loss.
Brayden Glass joined Breighner in double figures for Mountain Ridge with 13 points, and Kris Washington added seven. Ten players scored for the Miners.
Northern’s Jayden McNally led the team with 16 points, and Aiden Pickerel finished with 11.
Friday’s contest followed a similar script for Northern, which was competitive into the second half with Southern and Fort Hill at home in recent weeks before falling 66-50 and 72-65, respectively.
This time, however, the Huskies were punched in the mouth before halftime. Mountain Ridge dominated the middle quarters 41-14 to lead 33-24 at the half and 53-31 after three periods.
“It’s pretty frustrating to have a really good first quarter, kind of take the momentum we had from the Fort Hill game, and then come up and put up seven in the second quarter and seven in the third quarter,” Northern head coach Jeremy Johnson said.
Washington sparked Mountain Ridge’s run with seven points in the second quarter, but it was Breighner who took the game over after, pouring in 11 in the period.
Breighner found a soft spot in the middle of the Northern zone. When the Huskies collapsed, the 6-foot-7 seven big beat double- and triple-teams by finishing over the undersized defenders.
“Really love seeing Cam going strong in the basket the way he did,” Nightengale said. “He really asserted himself in the second quarter quarter and really got after the glass too and created second-chance opportunities.”
Mountain Ridge also got out on the fast break, pressuring the ball in man-to-man and jumping passing lanes to lead to run-out opportunities off turnovers.
“They were aggressive in quarter one as well,” Johnson said, “but that aggressiveness that we saw from them isn’t anything that we haven’t seen. … We can handle that pressure. We just don’t sometimes.”
Both teams made seven 3-pointers. Pickerel and McNally made three each for Northern. Glass sunk three triples for the Miners, and four of his teammates made one each.
Mountain Ridge benched its starting five for much of the fourth quarter, only playing Glass, a sophomore, at times in the period.
Still, the Miners won the fourth 19-14.
“Those kids work hard every day,” Nightengale said of his reserves. “We’re a team, we talk about roles in a team and those kids got an opportunity, played hard and they did good things tonight.”
Mountain Ridge won the junior varsity game 54-16. Camden Emerick led the Miners’ JVs with nine points, and Harry Ruddell and Will Hughes added six each.
Mountain Ridge hosts Allegany County rival No. 2 Allegany (8-3, 3-2 WestMAC) on Tuesday at 7 p.m., barring a weather-related postponement.
Northern will look for a bounce-back when it heads to Hancock on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
While Northern has faded down the stretch in games, like it did on Friday, the Huskies’ fast starts are something to build on.
“As soon as we can get the consistency, then we can make all of this work worthwhile,” Johnson said.