RUMFORD — After his team trimmed a double-digit deficit to a half dozen early in the fourth quarter of Monday night’s MVC clash with Mountain Valley, Jay coach Brian Kelly looked up at the scoreboard and saw a 50 under the visitors side.

Kelly looked back up several more times in the next few moments and knew what he was seeing couldn’t be good.

“We were on 50 points with how much time to go in the game? And we ended up with 51,” Kelly said. “We stopped making anything at the end.”

Jay’s struggles alternated between the field and the free throw line, and Mountain Valley took advantage of every opening to pull away for a 73-51 victory at Puiia Gymnasium.

Cam Kaubris scored a game-high 19 points and added five rebounds and 10 assists for the Falcons. Izaak Mills and Isaac Roberts came off the bench and chipped in with 18 points and 16 points and 14 rebounds, respectively, to help the Falcons overcome a brutal start.

“We were cold. We were real cold at the beginning of the game,” Kaubris said. “That’s just early-season basketball. You’re going to clang a few off the rim. You’ve just got to keep battling away and it will eventually fall. In the second half, we knew that we’re well-conditioned and we had confidence that we were going to be able to out-run them at the end.”

That’s what Mountain Valley (2-0) did after James Barker broke the Falcons’ full-court press for a layup that made it 56-50 with about six minutes remaining. Two Roberts free throws and a fast break feed from Kaubris that Roberts converted pushed the lead back into double digits for good as the Falcons closed the game on a 17-1 run.

“We stepped it up (defensively) in the second half but we’ve still got a lot to prove on the defensive side of the ball,” Mills said. “We were slow getting to our help side and that’s a big part of our defense.”

Mountain Valley’s slow rotation got the it into early foul trouble. Jay was in the bonus less than five minutes into the game, but the Tigers never made the Falcons pay from the free throw line, shooting just 47 percent (17-for-36). Mountain Valley, meanwhile, hit 76 percent of its freebies (19-for-25).

Jake Bessey led Jay with 18 points, while Barker added 13 points and nine rebounds and Kyle Storer 12 points and 15 boards.

Jay went 7-for-16 from the line in the first half, and that helped the Falcons, who sat three starters on the bench early for disciplinary reasons, stay in the game. Despite missing their first seven shots and turning the ball over five times, the Falcons only trailed by three when Ryan Nicols finally got them on the board with a 3-pointer 3:36 into the game.

Storer and Barker controlled the boards early and Bessey exploded for 13 second-quarter points as the Tigers took a 28-19 lead on a nice backdoor play from Tyler Gervais to Bessey. A jumper by Roberts, then a run of six straight points by Kaubris, sparked by his steal and layup, tied the game at 28.

“You could see Cam really pulled their guys together and he sort of took over the game at that point with shooting and passing and intensity, and it carried over to the rest of their team,” Kelly said.

“That turnover was huge because it got us into the running game,” Mountain Valley coach Rick White said. “Our man-to-man press is working pretty well. We got beat a couple of times long, but that’s going to happen.”

Bessey answered with a 3-pointer with 20 seconds left in the half, but Kaubris found Mills wide open on the left wing for a 3-pointer that knotted it at 31-31 just before the halftime buzzer.

“The kid just draws so much attention, somebody’s going to be open,” Mills said. “He’s got two or three kids crashing on him all the time, so I just spot up at the 3-(point arc). If he’s not putting it up, I’m there for the kick-out.”

“Early on in the game, I was forcing some shots,” Kaubris said. “Later on, I was able to find the open guy, find the guy in the corner and they started hitting them.”

A Mills free throw to start the second half put Mountain Valley in front for good. Roberts scored six straight points midway through the third to inflate the lead to double digits for the first time at 45-35. The Tigers, who shot just 20 percent from the floor in the second half, were only able to make a slight dent the rest of the way.

“I’m happy to be 2-0 right now because I think we’re still about three weeks away from where we need to be as far as running,” White said. “What we got to see today which I was happy with was our bench, which played better than I anticipated.”

Jay, which beat rival Livermore Falls on opening night, fell to 1-1.

“At this point in the season, I don’t know if satisfied is the word, but it’s not discouraging where we’re at right now,” Kelly said. “It’s something that we can build on and know that we can compete with anyone.”

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