CHOCOWINITY — Anytime the Warriors made a run, the Knights answered on Thursday night. After jumping out to an early, Terra Ceia maintained the advantage and went on to win, 69-59, Thursday evening at Unity Christian.

The Knights hit shots early, weaving in between the Warriors zone, making the extra passes that led to some good buckets early on.

Terra Ceia began the game in man-to-man, but after some early foul trouble, head coach Roger Klaassen made the change to zone.

“I thought overall we played an outstanding game. We got in some foul trouble, had some kids come off the bench and get some big minutes. We were consistent on the offensive end and did what we needed to do,” Klaassen said. “We just have to be more consistent like we were tonight, our defense has got to get better. It’s a work in progress, but we have some big conference games coming up here soon so we’ll see.”

Junior guard Matt Van Staalduinen led the Knights with 28 points. He hit three 3-pointers and nailed eight free throws in the fourth quarter to salt the game away late.

“I mean it always feels good to silence the crowd with a big shot when we lose a little momentum,” Van Staalduinen said about hitting a couple of big shots down the stretch. “I think we moved the ball well tonight, drive-and-kicked, didn’t hit a lot of shots at first but we finally started knocking them down late.”

Knights’ junior guard Gunner Crouch also had a big night, dropping 27 points and tallying a couple of assists as well. Alex Van Staalduinen scored eight, Elijah Shelton contributed with a 3-pointer, and Bryson Bach had two.

The Warriors tried to rally back from deficits throughout the course of the game. They cut the Knights’ lead to as few as five points on three different occasions in the second half, but couldn’t close it any further.

Warriors’ senior Colby Case scored a game-high 29 points in the contest, Jack Kirkman picked up 17, Jeff Harris had nine and Nick Jones tallied four.

“Terra Ceia is a good team. They kind of caught us off guard coming out in man-to-man, got a couple of fast breaks on us and that first half cost us the game,” Warriors head coach Joey Craft said. “I told them not to hang their heads. It stung a little bit, because we really wanted to beat them. We just have to do things in the game that we do in practice moving forward.”

The Warriors will play North East Carolina Prep School on Monday afternoon. The Knights will host Hobgood Academy on Tuesday.