Farmville Central’s Tyler Maye scored 23 points, despite not playing most of the fourth quarter, in a 77-47 handling of Washington. The Pam Pack was coming off a strong showing that earned it its first 2-A Eastern Plains Conference win, but the defending 2-A state champions were too much to handle.

Washington was competitive early on. It established a quick 7-2 lead thanks to Sharwan Staton’s ice-breaking 3-pointer and assist on Harvey McCullough’s floater.

“Defense comes with a lot of effort, discipline and knowing what you’re supposed to do,” Pam Pack coach Ralph Biggs said. “I think, in the first quarter, we played with tons of effort and tons of discipline. I think it got chipped away. We lost out discipline and got caught up in the moments of the game instead of staying with our game plan.”

The Jaguars settled in before long, though. Justin Wright’s layup through traffic sparked a string of 10 unanswered points. Maye knocked down a 3-pointer and bookended the spurt with a steal-turned-layup at the buzzer, giving Farmville Central a 14-9 lead at the end of the first.

“You’re on the road. To expect to come out and blow somebody out of the water in the first two or three minutes, this is the wrong business to be in,” Jaguars coach Larry Williford said. “I thought we were steady. Even though the shots weren’t falling early, we had a good pace with what we wanted to do. Our pressure defense sped them up and we got turnovers there.”

Maye was an offensive catalyst for the Jaguars, but Biggs knew he couldn’t key in on him too much without poking holes in his own defense.

“Our goal wasn’t to slow him down. It was to make it difficult basketball for everybody,” he said. “When you have a good player like that, you want to slow him down, but if you focus too much on slowing him down, they kill you in other areas of the game.”

Suae Poe got a steal and a layup of his own to pull the Pam Pack within three, 15-12, but the Jaguars pushed the away again. A pair of triples in the second helped push the visitors’ lead to 33-18 by the end of the half.

“We got a little out of hand. Rattled is the key word,” Biggs said. “We got rattled when they started making shots. We don’t have the mental discipline and toughness to fight through. They made two shots, they made three shots in a row. Let’s go down and get a good shot of our own. We want to get it all back in one shot, but there’s no 10-point shot in basketball. We seem to think that sometimes.”

Washington never came closer than 15 after that. Farmville Central had multiple baskets for every Pam Pack make. Try as they did to slow down and chip away, Farmville Central did well to maintain control.

The Pam Pack still has a lot of good to focus on from the past week. There are still four more conference games ahead to make some waves.

“You can focus on the good things. Us coaches will probably focus on the bad things,” Biggs said. “We’ll let them enjoy the good things, and we’ll focus on the bad things so they can be good things in the next game.”