The North Callaway Thunderbirds nearly erased a 21-point third-quarter deficit and came close to handing the South Callaway Bulldogs their first loss of the season on Jan. 5.
Such a letdown didn't materialize when South Callaway and North Callaway encountered each other again in the first round of the South Callaway Invitational Tournament.
The top-seeded Bulldogs scored the game's first 14 points, remaining unbeaten behind a 68-29 dismantling of the No. 8 Thunderbirds on Tuesday night at the high school.
South Callaway (12-0) will now play No. 5 seed New Bloomfield in semifinal play at 6 p.m. Thursday at the high school. The Wildcats topped No. 4 Montgomery County 63-59 in their first-round game Tuesday night.
North Callaway (2-9) will face Montgomery County in the consolation semifinals at 6 p.m. Thursday at the middle school.
South Callaway head coach Tony Brandt expected the kind of response he received Tuesday night from the Bulldogs after their narrow 58-56 victory over the Thunderbirds in Kingdom City.
"If it had been a close game again or if we had lost in the first round, I would have been extremely disappointed," Brandt said. "It was good to see them take a lot of that responsibility upon themselves and decide that they did not want that to happen again."
The Bulldogs forced five turnovers Tuesday night before North Callaway finally got on the scoreboard on freshman guard Coy Danison's layup with 3 minutes, 21 seconds left in the first quarter.
Brandt noted that he called off South Callaway's pressure defense in the second half in the previous meeting against the Thunderbirds, who responded by outscoring the Bulldogs 33-19 in the second half.
This time around, Brandt explained, South Callaway didn't intend to back off on its press.
"Pressure helps, but it's more - for us - it's to get us started and get our kids playing hard and to try and get a mindset early that we're going to play uptempo and fast," he said.
The Bulldogs led 16-6 after one quarter. South Callaway then produced 11 of its 21 second-quarter points off North Callaway turnovers to carry a comfortable 37-15 lead into halftime. North Callaway finished with 22 turnovers.
"We did a decent job of handling (the pressure) at our place and then here it was different; it was a different speed they played with," Thunderbirds head coach Matt Thomas said. "They turned up their intensity and we stayed at (level) one all night long."
On Tuesday night, Thomas felt North Callaway resembled the team that was 0-6 entering Christmas break. Before the matchup, he felt the Thunderbirds had rededicated themselves to fundamentals like rebounding, taking charges and blocking out.
Re-emphasizing those elements pushed North Callaway to a 2-2 record in its last four games, but Thomas saw a regression on Tuesday night.
"Tonight, (we took) no charges, no attempted charges, we got outrebounded and we turned the ball over," Thomas said. "All those little things, all those minor things that you think are just minor add up to a 40-point loss."
The Bulldogs continued the onslaught in the second half, increasing their advantage to 56-25 after three quarters.
A three-point play by South Callaway senior guard Dax Helsel early in the fourth quarter activated the running clock. The Bulldogs outscored the Thunderbirds 12-4 over the final 8 minutes.
"It's still a work in progress," Brandt said of his offense. "I don't know if we make the greatest decisions in transition and we're working on that and even in our (offensive) sets, just working on timing, but I can see the things we've been focusing on the last two weeks in practice offensively."
Senior guard Troy Hentges paced South Callaway with a game-high 18 points. Helsel supplied 13 points and handed out five assists, while senior forward Terry Miles finished with 12 points - all in the first half - and four blocks.
Senior forward Luke Horstman collected a game-high seven rebounds.
Danison paced North Callaway with seven points. Senior guard Brandon Hagedorn scored six points and matched senior forward Michael Pezold with a team-high four rebounds.