ABOVE: Fairmont's Hadan Toomer drives past a Worthington defender in Big South Conference boys basketball game Friday night in Fairmont.

FAIRMONT – Troubled by the injury bug, the Fairmont Cardinals’ deep bench came up big Friday night in a 65-48 Big South Conference boys basketball win over the Worthington Trojans. Despite a slow start, Fairmont found its rhythm and now sits at 10-4 overall and 6-3 in the conference.

“We had to play some guys that haven’t played much this year,” said Fairmont head coach Jared Thompson. “We continue to kind of have the injury bug and that really regained our focus the last couple days in practice because we just have been down trying to get some new guys trained in. And we had to run a little bit different offense than we have because we just ran out of big guys in practice, and for the game tonight it was good to see those guys step up in ways. We’re proud of our three sophomores and Tavian [Harvey] for coming in and playing when they haven’t played a whole lot lately.”

The absence of Harmon Schrunk, Logan Junkermeier and Trevor Maakestad have had a visible impact on the way the Cardinals approach the game. Despite sitting at 2-11 coming into the game, Worthington sent an athletic and gritty team to meet the Cardinals on the court.

“We knew that we would have to spread them out a little bit more,” said Thompson. “We’ve been working that two post lineup quite a bit high-low and we don’t quite have the number of guys that can play that way, so we kind of had to spread it out around Oliver and you could see that early with the dunks. We were able to spread it out a little bit more so he had kind of a little more room to operate in the paint by himself and he worked that to his advantage, but their ball pressure really bothered us first half.”

Leading the Cardinals was Oliver Tordsen with 20 points and 10 rebounds, while Nolan Schultze had 12 points. Joseph Hackett had 11 points and five rebounds, while Joe Long had 7 points and five rebounds. Hadan Toomer had 6 points and five rebounds, while Brett Williams had 6 points and six rebounds.

Fairmont opened the first half with its usual game plan, swing the ball around the outside to create a lane for a cutter to drive to the net. Tordsen was that cutter, slamming home the first basket of the night.

The teams continued to exchange buckets, gaining a feel for each other’s defense, with the Trojans leading 9-8. The Cardinals continued to feed Tordsen the ball until the Trojans took away the lane, forcing the shooting to the 3-point line. With 8:31 on the clock, the Cardinals held a 4-point lead, 19-15. Worthington hit three consecutive 3-pointers, jumping out to a 23-22 lead. Fairmont responded in kind with two 3s off the hands of Harvey and Schultze. Only down by 1, the two continued to battle. Fairmont fell behind 33-30 until a shot from just inside the arc moments later by Williams tied things up 35-35 at the buzzer.

The second half featured a return to form for the Cardinals, who were able to get back to getting the ball to a big in the paint for the bucket. Fairmont also seemingly found the answer to the Worthington shooters, keeping them off of the board for the first four minutes as the Cardinals took a 40-35 lead. The Trojans began to push back, driving hard to the paint and finding success in their mid-range shooting and at the midway point of the half were only trailing Fairmont 50-44.

The lanes opened back up for the Cardinals in the final 10 minutes of the game when Long drove to the basket, a deviation from his usual outside shooting. Fairmont allowed only another 4 points in the final six minutes of the game while Tordsen got to work below the basket, scoring 6 of the Cardinals’ final 13 points of the game to secure the victory.

The Cardinals head to Marshall for a 2:30 p.m. conference game on Saturday