Central's Dax Whitehead goes airbourne for a basket over Caronport's Riley TrithardtThe Central Cyclones may have been playing with a short bench and rolling through all ten players, but that didn't slow them down on Tuesday night.

They rolled to an effortless 95-30 win over the Caronport Cougars in the return of the High School Senior Boys Basketball League.

“We played great,” said Central head coach Leigh Pethick.  “I thought our guys kept their composure for the most part.  They played hard, ran hard and we got the Christmas rust off.”

Central excelled in all facets of the game in the win.  They were strong on the boards in the first quarter as they built up an 18-8 lead.  The second quarter was led by the Cyclones outside shooters as they couldn't miss throughout the quarter, extending the lead to 50-14 at halftime.

The Cyclones kept the peddle to the metal in the second half and were able to post 25 points in the third quarter and 22 more in the fourth with contributions from everyone throughout the game.

“We tried to mix it up a bit with guys that haven't played with each other very much so far this season, so that was one of our goals,” said Pethick.  “I'm just happy that we won and we can look forward to this weekend.”

Every player on the Cyclones registered a point in the win and they were led by post Dax Whitehead, who poured in 24 points.  Aidan Saladana added 18 points, while Bailey Wong had 11 and Jacob Labocetta put up 13.

Caronport struggled to find any consistency on the offensive end and couldn't find a way to get a stop on the defensive side in the loss.

“We came out a little bit slow off the break,” said Caronport assistant coach Brendan Adrian, who ran the game with head coach George Williatt out due to an illness.  “We weren't able to run the fast break like we wanted to, we weren't boxing out, but we still played well as a team and morale is up.”

That was the encouraging sign that Adrian saw in the loss is that the team continued to play hard to the final buzzer, despite the lopsided final score.

“That was good to see and we'll expect to see that through the rest of the season,” he said.  “We just need to work on defence and boxing out, we're giving up too many easy offensive rebounds, but we can improve on that for sure.”

Aaron Adrian provided most of the offence for the Cougars in the loss, scoring 18 points  with Jonny Toews adding five and Inyota Mwunvaneza scoring four.

The win moves Central into first place with a 3-1 record, they're two points up on Peacock, and Caronport falls to 0-4 to start the year.  Both teams are off from league play until next week, when Central meets Peacock for another first place showdown on Tuesday and Caronport takes on the Toilers next Thursday.

The 53rd annual Moose Jaw Senior Boys Invitational will be happening this weekend at Peacock and Central.  The Cyclones open up against North Battleford on Friday afternoon at 3:30pm and the Toilers take on Meadow Lake in their opening game at 5:30pm.  The final is on Saturday at 5:00pm.