ABOVE: Fairmont's Oliver Tordsen slams down a dunk in a Big South Conference basketball game Tuesday night against Tri-City United in Fairmont.

FAIRMONT — The Fairmont Cardinals (8-3) boys basketball team cruised to victory over the Tri-City United Titans (0-10) in a Big South Conference basketball game Tuesday night 76-45 despite missing two bigs due to injury and illness.

“Size is a factor in every game,” said Fairmont boys basketball head coach Jared Thompson. “We hardly ever see a team that’s bigger than us. And we’re missing a 6-9 and a 6-6 kid tonight for injury and for sickness. So we’ve got a lot of size even in our depth, and that’s important. If you’re going to play the way we do, you’re going to need that because you’re going to have sickness, you’re going to have injuries, you’re going to have foul trouble. So we were able to overcome some of that tonight to kind of still let our size matter.”

Leading the Cardinals was Hadan Toomer with 18 points and four rebounds, while Harmon Schrunk had 15 points and five rebounds. Nolan Schultze had 14 points and four rebounds, while Oliver Tordsen had 8 points and four rebounds.

The size and depth of the Fairmont team were key factors in securing the victory on top of a solid zone defense and an aggressive full-court press. Thompson said the team’s defense has been a steady force throughout the season, no matter what scheme they were playing.

“The defense has kind of been our defense this year. We weren’t really changing that,” said Thompson. “We did press a little bit more than we have the last few games, but we’ve been working on that quite a bit. We thought we could pressure their guards and get them in a hurry. And we knew we needed to contain number 23 [Jaylen Nhem] … good shooter. That was one guy we had to make sure we got out on. We lost him a few times, but we were able to get a comfortable lead pretty early, and then get a lot of guys in on parent night and a lot of guys scoring.

The Cardinals came out firing in the first half as Schrunk put Fairmont on the board early. The zone defense and size of the Cardinals continuously disrupted the passing lanes of the Titans, forcing the shooting outside where Jaylen Nhem hit two 3-pointers to get Tri-City’s first points of the night two minutes into the opening frame 9-6. Tordsen, Toomer, Schrunk and Hackett continued the onslaught by the Cardinals, jumping the lead to 18-10 before the Titans called a timeout to adjust. A 10-0 run by the Cardinals extended the lead further heading into the bottom of the half to bring the score to 28-10. The Titans continued to struggle with the full-court press and intensity of the Cardinals’ play, closing the half 44-17.

Fairmont carried the same pace into the second half as they did in the first, continuing to dominate inside the paint and maintain consistent scoring, jumping out to a 62-31 lead with 11 minutes remaining. Nhem continued to battle, trying to get the Titans back into the game, but Williams continued hitting shots for Fairmont and helping extend the lead to 70-37 with six minutes left in the game. Thompson went to the bench, changing the lineup and getting his roster valuable play time before the buzzer brought the game to a close 76-45.

The Cardinals will host Waseca at 7:15 p.m. on Friday.