Staff photo / Brian Yauger Garfield’s Payton Soltis (15) passes to a teammate during Wednesday’s game against Newton Falls in Garrettsville.

GARRETTSVILLE — Garfield set the tone early on Wednesday and carried that momentum en route to a 47-19 victory over Newton Falls.

“It’s always so hard playing them because, (Newton Falls coach Mark Baker is) going to play that 2-3 zone, and it’s going to frustrate you, just because you’re going to want to uptempo it a little bit, and they’re going to want to slow it down. We want to pick up the pace a little bit, so I really told them when we get rebounds, get out and go to try to push the pace a little bit. Then against the zone, move the ball around, don’t just fall in love with the shot because they’re gonna give you threes.

“If you’re a good 3-point shooting team, then good for you. But if not, you don’t just fall in love with that shot because they’re giving it to you. If you’re not making it, then it’s going to be a long night.”

Mandy Cardinal, who had to swap jerseys at halftime due to blood, finished with a game-high 26 points.

Madison Davis led the Tigers with 11.

In the second half, Newton Falls slowed things down to their pace, and it led to points.

“We were really struggling against their matchup zone that they were playing,” Baker said. “We struggled to play inside-out in the first half, we struggled getting the ball inside, we just hurried a lot of things on the offensive end of the floor and just really out of sync. At halftime, we talked about how the ball’s got to slow down a little bit, the cuts got to speed up a little bit and we’ve got to let people get to their positions. When we did that, we started getting the ball inside a little bit, played a little bit inside-outside, made some shots, played much, much better in the second half.”

The Tigers are battling both the injury and illness bug, missing multiple starters in the lineup. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however, as Newton Falls is slowly starting to get healthy.

Next up, the Tigers welcome Brookfield to town. They’ll square off against the Warriors on Friday at 5:30 p.m.

Garfield also plays next on Friday, going up against a tough Crestview team on the road. The Rebels have been a buzzsaw through 10 games of league play so far, so Gilbert knows it’s an uphill battle.

“We just need to put ourselves in a position to compete and see what happens,” Gilbert said. “They’ve pretty much walked through everybody in the league, so we’re just hoping that we can give them a little bit of a push.”

As the season winds down, Gilbert thinks his team needs a win against a quality opponent heading into the tournament. The team is progressing well, but beating a good team would work wonders for the girls’ confidence level.

In a tournament where anything can happen, confidence can be a difference-maker.

“We’ve had some really close games against some really quality opponents, we just haven’t been able to steal that victory,” Gilbert said. “I think if we can get that victory against a quality opponent, which we have several still coming up on the schedule, I think it’s going to show them what they’re capable of. Then who knows what’s going to happen once you get into the tournament? A team that gets hot going into the tournament definitely can make a run, and I’m hoping that that’s our case.”