Northmont coach Jim Brown was happy with how well his team followed the defensive game plan Friday night. Springfield coach Isiah Carson was unhappy with how he prepared his team for the physical battle of a Greater Western Ohio Conference Central Division game.

Northmont negated Springfield’s fast-break offense and rolled to a 56-34 victory behind 20 points from senior point guard Keith Richardson.

Springfield (6-2, 0-2) entered averaging 70.3 points with a run-and-shoot offense, but Northmont (7-1, 2-0) held the Wildcats to one fast-break basket.

“We had to stop transition baskets because their game is get it up the floor, take a shot, pound the glass,” Brown said. “Those kind of teams are difficult to play against. We just did such a great job.”

An 8-2 run to start the second quarter pushed the Thunderbolts’ lead to 20-9, and the closest the Wildcats came after that was seven just before halftime.

“I take a lot of blame for tonight,” Carson said. “Maybe I didn’t have my guys up for the game tonight – a tough, physical GWOC Central game because they were definitely tougher than us tonight.”

Northmont’s practice Thursday was dedicated to the plan of stopping the Wildcats’ running game and defending leading scorers DaeShawn Jackson and Ryan Minney and the pick and roll.

“I didn’t know how the game was going to turn out because there was a long ways to go, but I could tell four minutes into the game that they really listened,” Brown said. “We were doing it. And we were doing it the right way, and it was causing Springfield some issues.”

Springfield was also dealing with foul trouble on Jackson, the team’s sophomore point guard, and 6-foot-6 center Sean Burroughs. Jackson and Burroughs were held to four points apiece, and Minney had to work hard for his team-high 10 points.

“DaeShawn Jackson is one of our better guys, so it definitely impacts when he’s not in the game,” Carson said. “But other guys are more than capable of stepping in there and handling what we’ve got to do, but we didn’t do that tonight.”

Northmont, which was 14-7 last year and lost its tournament opener, has won seven straight after opening the season with a loss to Xenia.

“We’re just hungry,” Richardson said. “We want to prove people wrong. People don’t think we can make it far, and we just want to show them that we can.”