LATHROP — Following a truly abysmal start in which Lathrop did not score until midway through the first quarter on Friday, the Spartans closed the opening period on a 15-2 run and never looked back in a 71-47 western Athletic Conference boys basketball win over visiting Pacheco.

“That start was due to nerves,” Spartans coach Charles Roth said. “It was the first league game in front of the home crowd, and we missed quite a few layups. It had to be 10-15.”

Lathrop (2-0 WAC, 5-7 overall) went on to score 14 points in transition in the first half that saw the Spartans leading 40-19 at halftime.  

“I watched film on them and I saw that a transition game was going to give us the edge,” Roth said. “One of the things that I put on the board was, `push, push, push,’ and I was telling them that all night long. We pushed, we looked up to find the open guys and we made the extra passes. Tonight we played team basketball.”

Lathrop’s Izaias White led all scorers with 19 points and had a double-double with 17 rebounds along with three steals and three assists. White had five baskets on put-backs and the Spartans won the battle of the boards 40-31.

“We owned the boards,” White said. “Everybody was putting their body on the line going for the boards and just hustling, hustling.

“That’s all we are going to do all season through the playoffs is hustle.”

Napoleon Reeves (17 points, four assists, two rebounds) helped engineer a lot of those transition baskets for Lathrop and in the middle of a 10-point Spartans run to end the first half he had six consecutive points.

“We like to get out on the fast break,” Reeves said. “We are lethal when we are on the fast break to push the score up for us.

“We did pretty good on fast breaks and determining the tempo throughout the whole game.”

Jaelin Butler and Christian Buerster both flirted with double-doubles for the Spartans with Butler scoring 10 points with eight rebounds, two steals, an assist and a block and Buerster tallied eight points with 10 rebounds, an assist and a steal.

Deyonte Bell led the Panthers (1-1, 6-4) with 11 points.

Lathrop travels to Modesto on Wednesday to face Beyer at 8 p.m.

Junior varsity

Lathrop 55, Pacheco 37

The Spartans’ Reniel Crisostomo led all scorers with 22 points.

Lathrop’s Nick Parker added 12 points.

Freshman

Pacheco 45, Lathrop 44

The Spartans outscored the Panthers 13-5 in the fourth quarter but came up short.

Lathrop’s Bobby Cotton had nine of his 21 points in the fourth period and Matthew Rankin added 10 points.