PINETOWN — After some time of trading baskets, East Carteret took off on a 19-2 run in the second quarter en route to a dominant 78-42 win at Northside on Wednesday. The Mariners turned their defense into offense for easy baskets.

Johnathan Clark made a nice no-look pass to Isam Shamseldin, who stashed away a layup to cut the visitors’ lead to 26-19. East Carteret then got to the foul line plenty of times, and a steal-turned-dunk by Robert Johnson helped punctuate the spurt that all but put the Panthers away early on.

“They got to control the game defensively. A lot of these guys haven’t ever been put in a position to play a lot,” Northside coach Mike Proctor said. “I think we started throwing the ball away. If you turnover the ball and they get layups, they shoot their lead up really quick.”

The pace was quick right out of the gate. Northside was able to keep up early on. The speedy Mariners didn’t lead by any more than eight in the first, and the Panthers trimmed it down to four, 19-15, by the end of the quarter.

Even so, Proctor didn’t want to let East Carteret control the pace from the onset.

“We didn’t need to get into that kind of pace that much because they’re very athletic,” Proctor said. “They shoot the ball very well, so we didn’t need to get into that. But they dictated that with their defense.”

East Carteret used a full-court press to stymie the Panthers. They were able to break it occasionally finding a forward open down the court, but largely struggled to get through it.

“It’s tough without Rashod (Smith). He’s one of our best ball handlers,” Proctor said. “Then Johnathan got four fouls, so he had to sit over with me. It just made it tough with our couple of ball handlers not out there.”

Jack Garrison nailed a 3 at the buzzer to double up the Panthers, 48-24, at halftime. Bryson Radcliffe, Isam and Atia Shamseldin banged inside while the defense held the Mariners without a made shot for much of the third, but Northside couldn’t get any closer than 22 points.

The Mariners kept pouring it on as Northside only managed two buckets in the fourth quarter.

Proctor rolled out a revised starting lineup based on what he saw during practices over the holiday layoff. It saw Tyler Almond get a spot at the point. Parker Boyd started at forward, and Isam Shamseldin manned the middle to open the game.

“Isam played very well. He had a great game. It was probably the best game he’s had at Northside,” Proctor said. “Hopefully we can build on that.”