MONTICELLO — It took a half for the ninth-ranked Ponies to find its focus, but the end result didn’t look like it. Monticello outscored Pecatonica 39-8 in the second half of their Six Rivers East Conference boys basketball game Jan. 12, capping the night with a 64-25 victory.

“The message at halftime was to just be decisive,” Monticello coach Mark Olson said. “I felt like we were tentative in the first half … and the second half it was like ‘don’t think, just play.’ And I thought we did a much better job defensively.”

The Vikings (0-5, 0-4) had stayed with Monticello (11-2, 6-0) for much of the first half. Hunter Enloe came out strong for Pecatonica, scoring 13 of his team’s 17 points in the half, including two 3s and a jumper just before time expired.

“Enloe really got rolling in the first half. We just had to, as a team, make a little better effort to make things tougher for him,” Olson said.

The Ponies led by just eight at the break, as turnovers and collective foul trouble gave Pecatonica a chance to stay in the game.

“Any time we’d get a little something going there’d be a whistle for a foul, a whistle for a travel — which is on us. We were too handsy, we were too indecisive; we were dragging a foot, and it just killed any momentum, any chance to really get going,” Olson said.

But the second half was a different story altogether. In the first 2:20 of the second half, the Ponies outscored the Vikings 9-1, with a free throw by Kegun Brunker being the team’s only point for the first eight minutes of action. By the time Pecatonica hit its first field goal of the second half, a layup by Tyler McKeon in transition off a pass from Enloe, more than 11 ½ minutes had passed, and the Ponies had taken a 56-19 lead.

“I think you probably saw more of the team Monticello is in the first 10 minutes of the second half,” Pecatonica coach Matt Fink said. “They just guarded better; made everything harder for us. We had a lot of difficulty getting in and out of sets. We said they’d come out with more energy in the second half, and I just don’t think we met that energy. Credit them — they really exploited the mismatches, and good teams pull away from you if you’re not ready.”

Pecatonica had just two field goals in the second half and finished 4-for-12 from the free throw line. In the first half, the Vikings were just 3-for-12 from stripe, with two of the misses coming on the front half of a 1-and-1 bonus.

“We talked about that at half, that if you make some of those early, maybe it’s not an 8-point game — maybe it’s cut in half, or maybe you’re even ahead,” Fink said. “Going 7-for-24 is not going to cut it.”

Enloe was scoreless in the second half but still led Pecatonica overall. Monticello senior Peter Gustafson led all scorers with 24 points, while Owen Ace had 13. Nine different Ponies scored in the contest.

The night before, Monticello knocked off Belleville 65-54 in a nonconference game. 

The Ponies led 24-22 at half, but outscored the Wildcats 41-32 in the second half. Gustafson had 30 points, while Rudy Wicker finished with 10 and Ace and Tristin Flanagan both tallied 9 for Monticello. Trevor Syse led Belleville with 23 points.