BETHEL – Mountain Valley coach Ryan Casey had a plan to try to stop Telstar’s prolific outside shooters Tuesday night. It took a little time and some tinkering for the plan to work, but it worked soon enough for the Falcons to stay undefeated.

Mountain Valley held Telstar without a field goal for all but the last 15 seconds of the fourth quarter to pull out a 70-64 win.

Jarod Oldham and Marcus Palmer led a balanced Mountain Valley attack with 13 points apiece, while Zach Fergola added 12 points. Sean Caddigan led Telstar with 21 points, while Ryan Savage added 15 and Casey Fleet 12.

“We had a good gameplan coming in,” Casey said. “We didn’t execute it until about two minutes into the fourth quarter. (Telstar) can shoot. They’ve got kids that can play and they can score a lot of points fast.”

Telstar (10-5) showed how fast in the second and third quarters, as Caddigan and Savage rained 3-pointers down with alarming ease. But Mountain Valley (16-0) adjusted its defense and, combined with some tiring legs on the Telstar side, held the Rebels to 1-of-14 from the floor in the fourth quarter.

“We were giving them a matchup look early on and seeing if we could take out some of those shooters and we had a hard time with our rotation,” Casey said. “They did a good job attacking it so we got out of it.”

The Falcons went man-to-man and kept the Rebels from hitting a field goal through their first 11 shots, until Caddigan hit a 3-pointer with 15 seconds left, when the game was all but decided.

“We live and die by the outside shot a lot and we just got cold,” Telstar coach Alec Newell said. “We go through spurts like that. (Mountain Valley) made some big shots down the stretch.”

It seemed the Falcons might put this one away early, roaring out to a 19-10 lead at the end of the first quarter. But Caddigan and Savage, who scored all 15 of his points in the second quarter, got hot to pull the Rebels within 34-33 at intermission.

Caddigan (five treys) kept up the pace in the third quarter, nailing back-to-back 3s to spark a 10-0 Telstar run for a 46-39 Rebel lead.

The Falcons, who enjoyed a decided advantage on the offensive boards all night (16-9), got putbacks from Matt McCann (six points, nine rebounds) and Jeremy Childs (11 points) and a 3-pointer by Palmer to take a 51-48 lead.

“(Rebounding) has been our nemesis all year,” Newell said. “We did a much better job than we did against Jay (in a loss last week). We’re not a big team and we’ve got to box out to be successful. We focus so much on boxing out sometimes we forget to go after the ball.”

Caddigan made four straight free throws to put the Rebels up 55-51 early in the fourth, but Fergola started a 9-0 Falcon run with back-to-back treys that gave Mountain Valley a five-point advantage with 5:30 left.

“Zach’s got to do that for us,” Casey said. “He doesn’t have to do a whole lot, but when it’s on the line and we need a big shot, he knows that’s his job. Then Marcus hit some big foul shots down the stretch. It’s nice to know we can play in these close games. We haven’t really had a chance to see what it was like.”

Telstar pulled within one with 3:35 left on four straight Terry Collins free throws, but an Oldham hoop and four-for-five from the charity stripe by Palmer in the final 65 seconds kept the Rebels at a safe distance.

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