Blair Oaks wasn't accustomed to the matchup it had Friday against the tall and lengthy Lausanne Collegiate (Tenn.) Lynx.
That resulted in more jump shots than the Falcons would like to take.
On Saturday, Blair Oaks was back to being the bigger team and it used that advantage throughout a 71-43 victory against the Northmont (Ohio) Thunderbolts in the loser's bracket semifinals of the Joe Machens Great 8 Classic at Fleming Fieldhouse.
"They played behind us in the post," Blair Oaks coach Ryan Fick said, "and once we realized that was what they were going to continue to do, we thought we would continue to pound it inside."
The game was tied twice in the early going, but the Falcons never trailed.
Less than three minutes into the game, Luke Northweather took an inbound pass underneath the basket and went up for a score for a 7-5 lead.
It was the start of a 14-0 run the Thunderbolts never recovered from.
Luke Northweather scored six of his 18 points during that three-minute stretch, while Eric Northweather got around a trap for a layup and finished the run with a baseline reverse layup for a 19-5 lead with 2:03 left in the opening quarter.
The Northweathers combined to score four more points than the Thunderbolts.
Eric Northweather shot 14-of-20 for a game-high 29 points.
The size advantage the 6-foot-9 brothers had might have been even more beneficial in rebounding than scoring with both grabbing eight rebounds as Blair Oaks ended with a 31-22 edge in that category despite playing a 3-2 zone the entire way.
"That was probably the biggest concern with Northmont going in was their athleticism and their ability to rebound," Fick said. "They crashed the glass pretty hard from what we had seen on film, so I thought we rebounded well. And we thought that if we could speed them up a little bit - we threw a little ball contain press on them - it got them to shoot quick and got them in a hurry."
Northmont turned the ball over 21 times, 17 coming in the first half.
The Falcons led 21-10 at the end of the first quarter.
Then Quinn Kusgen took a turn at scoring with a pair of 3-pointers and a steal and layup during an 18-4 run than spanned more than six minutes in the second quarter.
Kusgen finished with 10 points.
Northmont stopped the bleeding a bit at the end of the first half as Jordan Smith scored a second-chance basket and Patrick Ivory added a steal and layup.
Ivory led Northmont with 10 points and seven rebounds, while Smith added eight points and six rebounds.
"Ivory makes good decisions with the ball from the high post and I thought we did a good job of, for the most part, keeping the ball out of the middle zone," Fick said.
Eric Northweather finished off the first-half scoring with a short hook shot for a 41-18 lead.
Both Northweathers had a dunk in the third quarter, including Luke taking a pass in an open lane for a two-handed slam for the team's final points of the third quarter.
Blair Oaks had a 57-33 lead entering the fourth quarter.
Blair Oaks (8-1) will finish play in the tournament at 4 p.m. today in the fifth-place game against Oxford (Miss.), which defeated Upper Arlington (Ohio) 54-41 on Saturday.
"They've got some strong, athletic kids," Fick said.
Upper Arlington and Northmont will play at 2:30 p.m. today in the seventh-place game.