Manteca exploded for 27 first-quarter points and a 21-point halftime lead Thursday night before cranking up the defensive effort and limiting visiting Tokay to just eight second-half points on the way to a resounding 69-33 win for the Buffaloes in non-league basketball action.

“We came out worrying too much about the offense,” Manteca coach Jason Hitt said. “We let them have some easy buckets early. Coach (Bob) Orr made it a point at halftime that we needed to buckle down and that Tokay should not be scoring as much as they were.

“We are heading into the Modesto Christian Tournament and our philosophy of `five stops five times’ is what we strive for and in the third quarter we got nine stops in a row, one short of our record. In the second half we definitely took a much bigger defensive standpoint compared to the first half and I think that was the difference in the game.”

Hitt is looking to the defense as a big part of his planned success.

“Every player is starting to pride themselves on defense,” Hitt said. “If we can be that last year’s defensive rebounding team with the offensive unit we have this year we will be a really special group.”

In addition to limiting the Tigers (1-9) to just eight second-half points, Tokay did not get a rebound in the third quarter until there was 3:32 left in the period and the Tigers had just five rebounds in the second half.

Elijah Nelson led the Buffaloes (9-2) with 15 points and he just missed a double-double with nine rebounds, grabbing seven off of the glass in the third quarter.

“I think we just had the pace and the aggressiveness,” Nelson said. “We were bigger than the other team.

“We work on boxing out a lot.”

Noah Lyons added 12 points and six rebounds with a steal, scoring six points in the third quarter.

“We were bigger than them and we rebounded well,” Lyons said. “We held them to five rebounds in the second half.

“We preach on rebounding. We box out every practice and that’s what we tried to work on tonight. We tried to push the pace.”

Evani Gaeta (five rebounds) Peyton Nieman (four rebounds, steal) and Ramesh Kabiri (three rebounds, two assists) added eight points apiece for Manteca.

Zeeshaun Akbar led Tokay with 13 points.

The Buffaloes kick off the Modesto Christian Holiday Hoop Classic on Monday night at 8:30.

Junior varsity

Manteca 43, Tokay 25

Joe Peringhelli led the Buffaloes with 12 points.

Freshmen

Tokay 41, Manteca 35

Devon Richardson led the Buffaloes with 13 points and three rebounds.

Cooper Chamberlain (seven points) and Evan White (six points) added five rebounds apiece.